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by ThylacineLily



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alien Technology, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alzheimer's Disease, Angst, Beginning Signs of PTSD, Brief Wake Mention, Child Abuse, Confrontation, Deception, Flashbacks, Gen, Graphic Description of Injury, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Magic, Magical Dampening, Mentions of Mental Illness, Mentions of miscarriage, Mentions of terminal illness, Mind Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Narcissitic Personality Disorder, Negative Thoughts of Self, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Past Mind Control, Past Murder, Past Violence, Past War Stories, Past invasions, Rating May Change, Restraints, Slow Burn, Vague Mentions of Violence/Character death, memory sharing, mention of infanticide, mentions of bullying, minor break down, physical violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21782788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThylacineLily/pseuds/ThylacineLily
Summary: She knew returning home after being away for so long would be difficult. She would have new technology to adapt to, she would need to find a job, need to start her life all over again. What's the first thing she reads about since it's still fresh on everyone's minds? The Battle of New York and an event being called The Convergence.When she first found out about aliens it had been a lot to process. How was she going to process Gods and superheros?Maybe she shouldn't have come back here.(Tags/People will be added as they need to be/appear.)
Relationships: Frigga | Freyja/Odin (Marvel), Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Thor/Jane Foster
Comments: 10
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just want to start by saying a story long shout out to my friend who helps with creative input. She's awesome and she puts up with my weird ideas 😂
> 
> Now, if you're not familiar with the Animorphs series you need to get yourself into it, or at least check it out, because it really is an amazing series if you're into Sci-Fi. Because I want to avoid giving away a lot of what happens in the books, and I also want to keep the events of this story separate from the events of the books, I'm not going to bring in much from the books aside from info needed for the flow of the story.
> 
> I have a general direction I want to take this but I'm going to be adding or changing tags as I go along, but I'll make a note in the story summary when I do. All of that being said, onto the story!

_How did it come to this?_

How even _had_ it come to this?

_She isn't supposed to be even the slightest bit alright with what she sees…_

Yet the mortal woman before him had not fear or terror, not even disgust, but awe and wonder in her eyes as they slowly raked over the raised patterns etched across cobalt skin until she met with eyes whose irises reminded her of Korbel Sweet Rose, surrounded by sclera the color of the prettiest light pink blush. Eyes that showed his worried and nervous confusion as they met the forest green of her awe struck eyes.

_Why aren't you afraid of me?_

He wanted to ask her that one simple question so bad, yet at this moment the Silvertongue of Asgard, and now New Asgard, had a mouthful of lead. To make matters worse, any inebriation he had felt moments before had dissipated the moment he had caved to her poking and prodding, and in a drunken stupor rid himself of his Aesir visage, exposing the blue abomination underneath. His mouth opened and closed a few times before his jaw clicked shut while at the same time his Aesir visage quickly replaced his Jotunn form...and her smile was replaced by sad confusion.

"Hey wait… Go back, please Loki?"

He made a noise of discomfort in the back of his throat as the confusion in his gaze worsened. He licked his dry lips with a tongue almost dry enough to match. _When did my mouth get so dry?_ He pondered as he tried to swallow a growing lump in his throat. _By the Norns what have I done?_

"No. You've seen the monster and as I said before 'one time only'. You've had your one time-"

"No." Her voice was soft but the word held a surprising amount of weight as she stared him down. "If you call yourself a monster again, in my presence or behind my back, I will grab the nearest dagger and stab you. Do you understand me?"

Loki managed a nod after he took in the way her voice had a slight waiver to it as she issued her threat. He understood not to "poke the bear" just fine, but he didn't understand why she seemed so bothered though. Didn't _she_ understand the danger she would be in if he had been any other frost giant?

Lost for words for the second time that night Loki opted to drink his own wine instead of trying to come up with a reply. His brother was the only one so far who had forgiven him for his actions in NewYork, and he doubted the other members of his team ever would; Clint would obviously never forgive him for using the scepter on him, he held out no hopes out for that one. Yet here was this mortal, who lived on the realm he attacked, and she was upset _for_ him. To say she intrigued him would be under statement...


	2. Chapter 2

** 2013 **

"I don't get it Tony, if you feel like you might need the big guy to meet this girl why did you agree to meet her in the first place?" Bruce griped as he paced a path back and forth across the carpet of Tony's private meeting room at Stark Tower. "I mean, I get that she was adamant that she spoke with you directly because she claims to have a piece of alien tech, but why does she want to give it to _you_?"

"I don't know." Tony shrugged as he swivelled around in his office chair. "But if there's a piece of alien tech out there that the black market and other jokers haven't grabbed up, I'd rather be the one holding it."

"So then what's the threat?" Bruce furrowed his brow as his hands fell to his sides in an exasperated gesture.

"Jarvis?" Without waiting for a response from the AI he continued with, "Pull up the ID sent over by our alien tech girl for her visitor's badge."

Bruce moved closer to Tony's desk to better view the hologram that was showing a projection of a New York State driver's license. He looked at the information it showed and squinted behind his glasses as he tried and failed to find a flaw in it. "It looks normal, what's the problem?"

Tony held up a finger indicating to hold on a moment. "See, it looks normal, but I had Jarvis run facial recognition. Jarvis, tell the doc what you told me."

_"Yes sir. Dr. Banner, the name does not match the face on the identification card. The woman in the picture was reported missing August 10, 2000. She was suspected to have run away, but her family's testimonies were repetitive that she would never run away from home, yet no suspects for an alleged kidnapping could be found."_

"So who is she then?" Bruce questioned as he looked from the hologram to Tony, who gave a shrug as the hologram disappeared. "Still doesn't explain why you don't just throw a suit on if things get out of hand. If the Hulk has to come out I don't know how much damage he'll do or how long he'll be on the loose."

"Pepper has forbidden me from making another suit just yet, she's still mad about the whole," he paused to gesture around with his hand, "Mandarin, Aldrich Killian thing last month. Probably shouldn't have told Jarvis to initiate the _Clean Slate_ protocol but that's another conversation for another day. That being said at this moment I need-"

"Mr. Stark," his secretary cut in over the intercom, unaware of the conversation going on so many floors above her, "your two o'clock is here. Shall I send her up?"

Tony hit the button for the intercom and let her know to send the girl up before he released the button and looked at Bruce. "I need you. Please Bruce?"

Bruce gave a resigned sigh at the pleading look in his friend's perpetually worried brown eyes and hung his head. "Alright… Alright I'll stay."

Tony gave him a grateful smile as he stood up and walked around his desk, leaning on it as he waited with Bruce for the mystery woman. "Knew I could count on you. Hey Jarvis? Make sure the elevator doesn't stop until it's here."

_"Understood sir."_

"Oh, one last thing before she gets here… This isn't tech from Loki and his mess."

Before the scientist could ask anything for clarification, the elevator doors opened across from the meeting room and a woman stepped out, a messenger bag slung over her shoulder and held close to her side. As Tony stood from the desk and motioned for her to join them, taking a few steps towards the open doorway to greet her, Bruce took in the woman's appearance. The first thing he noticed about her was the apprehension and nervousness in her eyes, despite her smiling in greeting at Tony. She was only a few inches shorter than his friend, with hair that was braided back, but what he could see looked like it was dyed a variety of light blues and light purples, and her almond shaped eyes were forest green, and were now focused on him as Tony gestured to him and stated who he was.

"Hello Dr. Banner." She beamed an excited smile at him and let Tony lead her to one of the chairs at his desk. She shifted her attention to Tony as she set her bag in her lap, her arms resting over it in a subtly protective manner. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me Mr. Stark." She turned her head to look at Bruce. "And it's a pleasure to meet you as well Dr. Banner, your papers on biochemistry were so hard to put down. You're absolutely brilliant."

At the unexpected flattery Bruce gave a surprised smile. "You read my papers?"

"All of the published ones." She answered while giving a nod. "I hope that sometime after my meeting with Mr. Stark you and I can sit and chat a bit. Will you be joining us for this?"

"Oh he will be." Tony cut in as he leaned back in his chair, trying to look at ease while also putting more space between him and the girl. "I'd ask if you mind but it looks like you don't, so before we get to the reason you're here I do have one question for you. Who are you?"

Instead of looking startled or worried like he had expected of someone who had a fake ID, she simply smiled warmly at him. "I figured a man with your high profile would run my info, I'm glad you did, makes things easier to get into." She relaxed against the chair she was in as she regarded him. "The name on my license is the name I go by now, it is who I am. I promise the only people I'm hiding from are my family, and I would appreciate it greatly if you didn't let them know I'm okay. I'll answer questions about them later, but for now, my name _is_ Sephone Martin."

"I looked into your family." Tony started as he took a bag of freeze dried apple slices from his desk and chewed on a piece. "They're not mafia, not celebrities, not even old money. Your-"

"Please stop." Sephone may have worn an unreadable expression as she interrupted him, but her eyes held a sudden coldness that seeped into Tony's spine and made his mouth snap shut. "I will talk about them later, hell you bring around enough alcohol and I might even sing a song," she barely managed a friendly smile and a soft chuckle, trying to lighten the tension that was building between the two of them, "but for now I'm here for something that's actually important. I want to help you and your friends."

Tony looked between Sephone and Bruce. He made eye contact with his friend, only to be on the receiving end of a mildly chastising stare. He popped another piece of apple slice in his mouth and turned his attention back to Sephone, who was visibly tense and whose cheeks were slightly flushed from her discomfort. There was a heavy silence in the meeting room before Tony held out the bag in offering. "Apple slice? They're freeze dried."

Sephone gave a brief, thankful smile and nodded as she leaned forward and took a slice from the bag, looking it over with curiosity before she broke off a piece and popped it in her mouth. As soon as the flavor of the freeze dried fruit hit her tongue, her eyes widened and she popped the rest of the slice in, chewing it slowly to enjoy the snack.

"Is it that you've never had apples, or just never had freeze dried?" Tony asked with a grin as he held the bag out to Bruce and gave it a little shake, offering some to the doctor without taking his attention off the newcomer.

"Freeze dried," came the answer after Sephone swallowed the chewed up slice and Bruce waved off the offered bag. "Thank you. I don't know if they had those last time I was here, but I've been back less than a year and I'm still getting caught up on new trends and new foods."

"I'm sorry," Bruce sat up some as he caught what she said, "but what do you mean 'been back'?"

"Oh right, we haven't gotten there yet, sorry." She gave a sheepish grin and briefly ducked her head. "Got ahead of myself... The alien tech I contacted you about," she looked at Tony, her hands smoothing over the outside of the bag on her lap, "is from the planet I've called home for the last twelve years until my return about five or six months ago."

Tony and Bruce shared a look, a silent communication between the two of them as they each registered what she had just told them. Tony drummed his fingers on the desk before turning his gaze back to Sephone. "And what planet would that be?"

"They just call it 'Homeworld'," she answered, "and I could easily show you where it is on an astronomical map but before I tell you anything I need you to understand that everything I tell you, and any tech I give you, is me breaking one of the most important laws of my people. And before we go any further I'm sorry but I need to ask a favor. I'm sure you have surveillance or some form of security monitoring the room, correct?"

"That would be correct," Tony answered after a pause with a tone that made it clear he wasn't thrilled with her asking, and was also curious as to _why_ she was asking.

"Because of the sensitive nature of our conversation, is there any chance you could not let it save to a network others besides yourself have access to? With the law I'm about to break I would rather it stay to this room and us. Is that possible Mr. Stark? It would put me at ease to know the information is safe."

Tony raised his chin a hair as he debated whether or not to agree to her request. It was a reasonable request, and he wouldn't tell her but if anything did go wrong he knew Happy and Pepper could access the files and hunt her down. He just really didn't want it to come to that...but he also really wanted to make sure the tech she had stayed off the streets.

He kept his eyes on her as he cleared his throat and spoke up. "Jarvis?"

_"Yes Mr. Stark?"_

Sephone looked around in confusion for the source of the disembodied voice, and Tony couldn't help but grin at the bewildered look on her face.

"Close the door for me, would you buddy?"

_"Consider the door closed sir."_

"Thank you Jarvis." He leaned forward in his chair. "AI… Now that we have the privacy you wanted, why are you betraying them?" Tony enquired, giving her a skeptical look as he held the bag of apple slices out to her. "Take a couple. If you break this law are we going to suffer any consequences for it?"

"No," Sephone answered with a shake of her head as she took the offered slices and leaned back in her seat, carefully cupping the slices in one hand while using the other to break them into pieces while she continued talking. "Thank you. There won't be any consequences for you if they found out, only me, and I'm not betraying my people...just breaking a very big law. I'm breaking this law because Earth is my home. Even when I was away on Homeworld this planet was where I was born, and though I never planned on returning I still fought to keep it safe. Now that I'm back, and it's obviously under attack from new threats, I want to help keep it safe again."

"And that's why you came to us." A statement, not a question, as Bruce slid his glasses up his nose.

"Can we back up a sec to 'fought to keep it safe'?" Tony spoke through a mouthful of chewed up apple slices, earning a disgusted look from Bruce. "In 2000 when you supposedly disappeared you were fifteen, right?" When his query was answered with a nod, Tony got a pensive look on his face. "So that makes you twenty-eight?"

"Twenty-seven for a few more months, but yes."

"Up until the last couple of years there hasn't been anything alien related dealing with Earth. What exactly did you fight?"

"A silent invader. There was a very quiet, very well hidden war for Earth between the inhabitants of Homeworld and what was here from 1966 until 2000. I was only a part of it from 1998 to 2000, but I fought to save this place from what would have been a horrible, horrible take over."

"I'm sorry," Bruce cut in as he moved to the edge of his seat, "but you say said 1966? To 2000? There was a war here and no one noticed? I'm finding that a little hard to believe. Someone would have noticed aliens having a war for thirty-four years, there-"

"Would have been sheer panic," she finished for him to regain control of the conversation. "The ones who were trying to invade were aware that if anything were to look out of the ordinary, if anyone even suspected there were aliens slowly taking over, there would have been mass hysteria. People would become suspicious of friends and loved ones, hesitant to be a part of a large crowd, it would make it more difficult to take over. And if they tried to take by force there would have been even more panic and they needed to avoid that. But, if they had been successful, there would be no normal human left. Every single person you know now would be a host to a Controller, even you."

As they listened to Sephone, both Tony and Bruce paid attention to how serious she sounded as she spoke to them. The haunted look in her forest green eyes had worry gnawing at Bruce's mind. What was a Controller? What exactly did it mean to be a host? How did no one notice anything? Then he realized that if he had these thoughts…

He looked to Tony and saw the stiff posture his friend now sat with, his jaw visibly clenching as his panicked eyes focused solely on the girl in the room with them. Bruce could practically hear the PTSD worries racing through Tony's head, especially after the convergence that had happened barely a week prior. He had sat with Pepper to help keep Tony sane as he holed up in their new home, so he knew just how rattled his friend must be right now. She definitely had his attention.

"As I said though, that war is over and everyone is safe from that threat. The war wasn't easy, not all of it took place here on Earth, some parts of it happened in the emptiness of space as well as on other planets, but it is finished. The good guys won, and now that I'm back on Earth I want to help the good guys win again. Do you want to hear more? Or is it still so hard to believe that I should just go ahead and go?"

At the same time Sephone aimed a challenging look at Bruce, Tony stood up from his chair so fast he startled her and he locked eyes with her when she did shift her gaze to him.

"I want to hear more." The words fell from his mouth in a rush and Bruce could see a slight tremor in Tony's right hand. He wasn't the only one to notice.

Sephone's lips pulled into a small frown. "I'm sorry that what I said is unnerving to you Mr. Stark, but I assure you that old threat is long gone. I'm only here for the new threats." She noticed his chest was moving quicker with his breathing and frowned more as Bruce stood from his chair and went to Tony's side, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. "How about we take a small break before we continue? I need to use the bathroom, and you obviously need a drink. Does that sound like a good idea?"

Bruce held up a hand when Tony opened his mouth to speak, silencing him as he nodded at Sephone. "That does sound like a good idea. When you leave the office go right and it'll be two doors down. I'll have him calmed down by the time you get back."


	3. Chapter 3

Sephone knew she had taken longer in the bathroom than what was necessary for herself, but it had been obvious to her that Tony Stark needed a few minutes. She had seen the tremor in his hand and the terror in his eyes that made the bags under them look even worse than before, telling her all she needed to know. Her 15 years of experience with her adopted people had made her a natural at reading body language and facial expressions. How else can you communicate better with a race of aliens who had no mouth to verbally communicate with?

 _"Eyes are the windows to the soul,"_ bore an entirely different meaning back on Homeworld.

Her extra few minutes in the bathroom gave her time to help calm her own nerves. She was breaking one of the most important laws of Homeworld, and though she knew they would not find out, she still worried as if the consequences would come; not from Homeworld, but that things would go the same way as they had for the disgraced Prince. She had a lot to go over with the two men that were waiting on her, and she knew it would carry over into other meetings so she decided to only go over certain information for now and leave the rest to future conversations.

When she finally left the bathroom and made her way back into the meeting room Bruce was leaning on Tony's desk, talking quietly with Tony, who nursed what was more than likely a glass of booze. If she had been old enough when her life changed she would have grabbed a glass as well. She stayed near the door at first since they had been too engrossed in conversation to notice her. "Do you need a few more minutes?" Her offer of more time spoken soft and gentle, as if dealing with a scared child. She remembered how she herself had needed time to wrap her head around the same information she had given them so far. At least these two had prior experience with aliens before talking with her, they had just been stories to her before her life changed.

Tony looked up from his conversation with Bruce and shook his head 'no' before taking a long swig from his glass. He set the glass down and picked up the bottle of whiskey by his arm to pour a refill, then leaned back in his chair as Bruce and Sephone returned to their respective seats. He drummed his fingers on the desk as he regarded her with a look that read as him trying to decide which one of his many questions he should ask first.

"Let's take a step back for a minute here," he started, "this...Homeworld was it?" Sephone nodded to let him know he was correct before he continued. "This Homeworld you spent twelve years on, you say it's home to the good guys yet you're about to break some big law, 'one of the most important laws' you claim. Why break that law if you're one of the good guys as well? Also, how is breaking said law not betraying them?"

Sephone's lips pulled down a little as she thought how best to respond to his questions. "I suppose in some way it is betraying them, seeing as they're the ones who took me in and gave me the knowledge I have…" She paused to worry her lip between her teeth as she chose her words carefully, knowing how fragile this conversation was and not wanting it to go south. "I'm not doing it to hurt them, and I know I'm not giving the information to an enemy, but I guess the information I want to give you is for a trade of sorts." She saw the worry kicking up in his eyes even though his face remained pensive, and held up her hands in a peaceful gesture before returning them to her lap. "The only thing I want in return is to be able to help keep Earth safe and live in peace myself."

She looked at the messenger bag in her lap, the light case inside weighing down on her legs like a ton of bricks with the guilt she felt. "The law I'm about to break was put into place because of a Prince from the Homeworld. It's like… It's…" She looked up at the ceiling as if it held the answer to the words she was looking for, exhaling a huff of frustration before she got an idea and looked at Tony. "Please tell me you've seen Star Trek?"

Tony arched a brow, curious as to where she was going with this. "I have…"

"It's like the Homeworld version of the Prime Directive. Breaking the Prime Directive didn't make someone a bad guy if it was to help, they just went against a philosophy."

"But it could still lead to problems." Bruce chimed in, understanding what she was getting at.

"Exactly!" Sephone smiled, happy they were following along. "But in the case of Homeworld, instead of it being more of a philosophy than a set of rules like the Prime Directive was, this was made a law because what Prince Seerow did out of compassion for another race led to a galactic invasion and a war. He never meant for anything bad to happen, things just got out of hand." Her smile faded slowly into a saddened frown as she spoke. "He just wanted to help…"

"So do you." Tony sipped at his whiskey and tilted his head as he looked at her. "How do you know that won't happen here?"

"Because unlike the race Prince Seerow helped, you already have technology at your disposal. They had nothing and suddenly they had everything, like handing a blank check to someone who doesn't know how to handle sudden wealth. I can only hope I'm right in coming to you Mr. Stark, and hope it doesn't come back to bite me in the ass like it did Prince Seerow." Sephone made a point to lock gazes with the billionaire. "I am not one of the bad guys, and I would greatly appreciate a chance to prove as much to you. I don't expect you to trust me right away, that would be stupid of me, but I do ask for a chance to earn your trust just as I am giving you a chance to earn mine."

Tony and Bruce shared a look, another silent communication between the two of them, until they each nodded to one other in silent agreement and Tony directed his gaze to her. "Fair enough. But understand Ms. Martin, that if any of my friends get hurt because of this partnership I'm holding you responsible."

"Understood Mr. Stark, and in return if the technology and information I give you is misused or leaked in any way I will hold you responsible."

"Alright Sci-Fi," Tony replied as he stood up and leaned over his desk, offering his hand to shake, "you have yourself a deal."

Sephone rose and shook his hand with a confused but amused smile. "Sci-Fi?"

"You get used to it," Bruce said as he relaxed more now that Tony was at ease as well. "He gives everyone little nicknames."

"Ah, I see." She smiled over at Bruce then looked between the two of them as she and Tony released each other's hands to sit back down. "I'll have to get used to using nicknames again in general really, Homeworld inhabitants don't use nicknames, only titles and proper names."

"What are these guys called anyway?" Tony asked before taking a swig of whiskey. "Cos I gotta tell ya, 'Homeworld inhabitants' is a bit long winded for my liking."

Amused chuckling was Sephone's initial response. "They're called andalites, singular is just andalite. If someone has a rank in the military they are introduced that way. My ex-husband for example, if he were here I would introduce him as War-Prince Jalthar-Aglifi-Esgarrouth, but you would be allowed to call him Jalthar once in a personal setting. If I were to go by my Homeworld name I would be Fannifoy-Riotsdit-Liuary."

Tony scoffed into his whiskey. "And here I thought 'Homeworld inhabitants' was long winded." He shook his head as Sephone laughed. "No wonder you picked the name you did. Way shorter for introductions."

"Is there anyone else here?" Bruce adjusted his glasses as he looked at her. "Like you?"

"Technically? Yes… There are others on Earth who were born here but have the same andalite-given gift that I have, but they have always lived on Earth. They are a group of five and they call themselves the Animorphs. I left Earth to live on Homeworld because during his two years here Jalthar and I fell in love. Around the time he was to return home at the end of the war some events happened in my personal life that left me feeling like I didn't belong here, so when we were discussing our relationship it was decided I would come to Homeworld as his mate."

"How did he explain breaking this law you mentioned earlier when he brought home a human mate?" 

Sephone shook her head at Bruce. "He didn't, because I didn't look human. He made sure I got ahold of a piece of their tech that would allow me to look like them and blend right in. He only told his parents and his brother the truth, well his brother was on Earth with him so he already knew, but you get the point." She brushed some stray hairs behind her ear. "During our two years together on Earth he had already taught me almost everything there was to know about Homeworld--rites, rituals, prayers, the different flora and fauna, all of it. So by the time I was on the Homeworld, he supposedly had met me at another andalite post and brought me home. It was difficult to blend in at first but eventually I got the hang of everything, especially with his parents helping me out when Jalthar and Akdarin were unavailable.

But getting back on topic, the others here who have the same ability I was given do still live on Earth. I do keep in contact with one still, he and I bonded as friends, but I met them at the same time I met Jalthar because of what was going on at the time."

"The invasion?" Tony quirked a brow.

"The invasion…" Sephone nodded, and realized while it was being mentioned now was a good time to do some more explaining. "I found out about the invasion because a close friend of mine became a host to a Controller.

The thing about a host is that nothing looks out of the ordinary, so when my friend asked me to come with him to a new hangout spot he found I just thought everything was normal." She frowned as she revisited her memories of that night. "I was thirteen at the time, and because of the way his birthday fell in the year he was sixteen right before I was going to turn fourteen. So we took his mom's car and drove out until we showed up at this building. Something about the place just felt...off, but he insisted it was fine and that our other friends were there waiting on us. I followed him in and down some stairs, but when we got to the basement area it wasn't just our friends, it was a whole group of people.

Some were supervising the stuff going on while others walked over to this big pool looking thing that I've since learned was a Yeerk Pool. Kids and adults were split up into different groups, not by age though. One group was lining up to drop something from their head into this pool that looked like molten lead with some kind of creatures squirming within. I found out later that the things were yeerks, the Controllers, being dropped into the Yeerk Pool to feed before they would be returned to their hosts or put into a new one.

Some of the group at the pool walked away and disappeared into a room off to the side, while others were dragged by these ridiculously tall lizard looking creatures, kicking and screaming, to large cages where they were thrown in with others. I'd learn later that the ones in cages weren't voluntary, but the ones who just walked off were completely willing to be hosts. They were wandering off to watch TV, play games, maybe just chat. Like what was going on was a Tuesday."

She gave a sneer that was a mix of disgust and confusion as Bruce and Tony hung onto every word she said, more and more questions filling their heads as her story went on.

"The other group that humans had been divided into, was waiting to get their Controller back to carry on with their mission to infest. That bit I found out later, but at the time when we walked in and I saw what all was going on I looked at Tommy. I didn't know what to say or where to start, but when I looked at him I couldn't have spoken if I wanted to. Tommy, the sweetest, goofiest kid I had known for the previous four years was looking at me with this...this evil, nasty, predatory smile."

As she spoke her gaze had drifted down to her lap, her eyes taking on a glazed look as she got lost in the memory.

"He grabbed me and started pulling me to the front of the group of people that were waiting for their Controllers. I tried to scream and pull away, but one of the Hork-Bajir, the creatures I had seen dragging people away, came over and pressed this sharp spike it had at the end of its tail against my throat. It told me I was joining their cause whether or not I wanted to, and it helped Tommy lead me to the front. It was when I was being pushed to my knees that the chaos started.

Suddenly there were animals, five of them, and three of these things that looked like centaurs but with a tail each that ended in a blade; those three were andalites.

The Hork-Bajir, as well as several hosts tried to fight with the animals and the andalites, but it was obviously a losing battle. Tommy tried to get between me and one of the andalites, ready to knock me into the Yeerk Pool, but he was hit upside the head with the flat side of the tail blade, knocking him out cold. He fell into the pool and I was pulled away by one of the andalites." She frowned deeply. "In all the chaos, no one noticed he didn't come back up until he had already drowned. The andalite who pulled me to safety was Jalthar. He and Akdarin had teamed up with another Andalite and the Animorphs to take down a section of the Yeerk Pool here on Earth. They hadn't meant for their to be any human casualties but unfortunately there were a few…"

Sephone blinked herself back to the room when a hand carefully took one of her hands from her lap and curled it around a glass of whiskey. She looked up from the glass and found herself staring into Bruce's sympathetic gaze. She offered a small, thankful smile as she lifted the glass to her lips and took a sip.

"How about we let you have a moment before we start badgering you with our questions?" He offered as he gave her a gentle smile.

Sephone nodded with a grateful smile. "I'm sorry." She apologized as she looked at Tony, who had also gotten up and had come around to the desk to lean on it with his arms folded over his chest. From his relaxed posture she could tell it wasn't meant to be a threat of any kind, possibly just the way he stood when resting. "It's been so long since I revisited those memories, kind of opened old wounds…"

Bruce gave her shoulder a light pat as she nursed the whiskey he had given her. "You don't have to apologize for mourning the loss of a friend Sephone, plus what you witnessed and went through sounds like it was a very traumatic event to process, especially at thirteen."

"Yeah, dealing with aliens for the first time with no warning? Not fun." Tony griped into the whiskey glass he had unfolded his arms to pick up.

"It helps to have a good support group when dealing with that. I was lucky, even though some of the support group were said aliens." She chuckled at the humor in it and looked at Tony. "Ever since I got back I've been using the internet to catch up with the last twelve years, glad to see that's still useful… I read about the Battle of New York, the sacrifice you almost made. Thank you for saving Earth and everyone else that you were able to." She looked at Bruce. "And thank you as well for your part in the effort."

Tony gave a dismissive wave as his heart gave an unpleasant squeeze at the memory. "Just part of the job."

"You still deserve a thank you," she argued. "Either way, the work you and your friends have done to keep us safe is why I chose to come to you." She finished her own glass and thanked Bruce, as he took the empty glass from her, before she fidgeted with the flap of her messenger bag. "What questions do you have about what all I just said?"

"You sure you're ready to go on?"

Sephone nodded at Bruce, the alcohol having brought her emotions and her nerves back under her control. "Yes, thank you for asking." She gave him a small smile as she looked at Tony who had returned to the seat on his desk. "I'm sure you have plenty of questions for me by now."

"Oh yeah, plenty of those. First one though--how much of what we talk about are we allowed to share with the team? You said you want info to stay in this room and with us."

"Before I answer, can you tell me if anyone is on the team who didn't show up to New York?"

"No. We have people that would like to think we report to them," he paused to roll his eyes over S.H.I.E.L.D., "but it's just the six of us."

"Then you can tell the team everything." Sephone answered. "I'd like to meet them too at some point, if that's okay."

"If you're helping us out," Bruce started in as he moved to sit back down now that she no longer needed a comforting presence. "I think it might be easier if you were there to explain any tech you give us so a game of telephone doesn't lose any important information."

"Brucey Boy has a point," Tony chimed in as he slowly swivelled around in his chair, "so now that that's cleared, is Earth vulnerable to another war with these...uh...what were they called again?"

"Yeerks." She reiterated. "And no, the yeerk problem has been eradicated. Any that are left aren't a threat, and never supported the way things were carried out. Did they want a better life? Yes. However, they didn't want anyone to suffer for it. Similar to how all Nazis were German, but not all Germans are Nazis, make sense?"

Tony nodded to show he understood. Even if he didn't like the thought of yeerks still being around, at least they weren't a threat. "So onto the next question. How did you come back? Teleport? Fly? Crash land on a farm and smash a truck?" He cracked a smile when Sephone barked out a laugh and covered her mouth to somewhat contain the laughter she couldn't stop.

"This is not an Edgar suit!" She giggled behind her hand. "Though the huge cockroach alien version _is_ loosely based on a race called the Skrit Na. Lowell Cunningham had a run in with the nasty things."

Tony's smile dropped and he stared at her in a temporary stunned silence before he finally found his voice again. "Huh… Putting a pin in that for later. So really, how did you get here?"

"By ship," she explained, "minus the crash landing on some guy's truck. I came at night, landed in a remote area, and hid it good so no one would find it."

"Hid it? So it still works?" Tony pressed for more info, his mind already racing at the possibility of exploring and studying an alien spacecraft. It was an Area 51 fanboy's wet dream and he was the tech genius who could appreciate such an opportunity. "How does it fly? What is it made of? Oh, what fuel does it use? How did you get to Earth without NASA noticing you coming into the atmosphere? How fast can it go? What propulsion systems does-"

"Tony!" Bruce barked, cutting off Tony's rapidfire questions and effectively shutting him up, while also earning him a look of wild disbelief.

"She has an alien spaceship!" Tony blurted out. "How are you not asking questions yourself right now!? Don't you want to know what algorithms they use for space travel? If, or how they make contact back home when they're out in space?"

"Tony I have questions too," Bruce lightly chastised, "but you're not letting her answer anything before you throw out the next question." He looked at Sephone who looked thoroughly amused by what she was witnessing, if the light laughter coming out from behind the hand over her mouth was any indication. "There's no need to apologize for him, is there?"

"Not at all," she assured him through her laughter as she tried to calm it down. "I went nuts the first time I stepped onto Jalthar and Akdarin's fighter ship. I get now why the brothers were so amused." She looked at Tony, still wearing an amused smile as her hand reached into a zipper part on the side of her messenger bag and took out a clear, plastic case that had four flash drives lined up inside. "These have all the ship's data," she explained as she leaned forward and set the case on his desk, where it sat for barely a second before being grabbed up by an eager Tony who already had the case open by the time it was directly in front of him on the desk, "I translated it into English as I got it all together for you."

Bruce got up from his chair and moved around to the other side of the desk with Tony to look at the schematics that his friend was already pulling up on a holoscreen. He adjusted the glasses on his nose and tilted his head as he looked from the outside design to Sephone, who was watching them with her still amused interest.

"This looks like a stereotypical flying saucer." He stated, sounding mildly disappointed as if expecting more as he turned his attention back to the holoscreen.

"Yeah, the Skrit Na are bug type aliens, no care for flash and design," she explained as she checked her watch before returning her gaze to the two men, "most of the sightings blamed on 'the greys' are actually the Skrit Na looking for something to do. Why don't you guys take a look over those while I take a quick bathroom break?"

Tony nodded, without taking his eyes off the holoscreen, where they danced around all lit up, like a child staring at a pile of presents hiding under the Christmas tree. The girl, already forgotten on the other side of the screen, got up and made her way to the bathroom.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you read the new chapter I just wanted to say a quick shoutout to two very important people!
> 
> As always, my friend Ash, who has been available at random hours of the day/night to help with my brain farts and blocks. You all can thank her for a bit of this chapter.
> 
> And also StellarStylus, for their awesome comments and kudos. You can thank them for getting me back on track. I have a story I've been working on for another site and recently it grabbed my brain and would not let go. If it hasn't been for Stellar leaving their comments I have no idea how long that other story would have demanded my attention. Now that I'm back on track, hopefully updates won't be as far between. So so sorry about that.
> 
> Actually, when I did the standard "preview before posting" move, I noticed that something went...wrong...
> 
> In the books Thought-Speak is represented by the < > symbols, but for those of you who don't use HTML or are just getting into it, putting any text in there causes massive italicization. I included a sample in the end of chapter notes if you want to see what I mean. But be aware that if you go down first you will see a spoiler. To avoid spoilers you can read the story as is and then go look but it's up to you.
> 
> To combat that I've reversed them so instead of bordering a sentance in this form - < > \- I'm using them like >this example< here.
> 
> With all of that being said, on with the show!

When Sephone returned to the office, Tony and Bruce were talking excitedly together while going over the propulsion system schematics on the holoscreen. She returned to her seat, content to let them take their time and be ready to return to the conversation, but Tony had questions and zeroed in on her before her butt was even touching the leather of the chair.

"How did you get your hands on this thing anyway?" He probed as Bruce took advantage of Tony being distracted to look at the schematics from a better angle.

"The andalites have a few that were confiscated to help thin out the Skrit Na fleet," Sephone explained, "and when it was time for me to leave I told a lie that I was using it for a family emergency back at the base I was supposedly on when Jalthar and I fell in love. They're aware it might not be coming back, and since it's not like I used a fighter ship to leave, they won't care if it never shows back up."

"If the base wasn't on Homeworld how did you find out about a 'family emergency'?"

"With a Z-space transponder." She answered. "It sends communication as quick as a text. All of the War-Princes have one in case of a sudden call to arms, so I just said a call came through to Jalthar's transponder. Not like anyone was really going to question my leaving. We had recently made it known that we were no longer married to each other. Given the shame that follows a rare breaking of a marriage bond, they probably saw right through my lie and just let me leave out of pity."

The corners of Bruce's lips pulled down as he gave his attention to her. "Marriages don't end for andalites?"

Sephone shook her head. "Not as long as both parties are still alive. Who the shame is placed on is based on who was the cause." She frowned. "I was with him for twelve years and we had no children. He has an affair and gets the other female pregnant right away, which of course left me cast off so he could be with his family."

"So the shame fell on you?" Bruce questioned for clarification.

"It was mostly put on him for being disloyal to his wife. However, it was also on me for not fighting to keep him and not being willing to work it out somehow. Even if I had wanted to work it out with him - why they thought I would want to stay with someone who couldn't be loyal to me is beyond me - he didn't want to stay with me either, and it would have been wrong of me to make him choose between his new family or myself."

"Sounds like a real asshole," piped up Tony, who had been waiting for a chance to speak up after something she said earlier caught his attention, "but can we go back to 'Z-space transponder'?"

Bruce leveled a look at Tony that was more disbelief than disappointment but still got his point across. "Tony. Really? Right now?"

"No, Dr. Banner," Sephone cut in before any trouble could arise, "I'm perfectly fine with moving along. I don't wish to dwell on the past for long, so it's perfectly alright if Mr. Stark would like to ask questions." She directed an appreciative look at Bruce before she looked to Tony. "The Z-space transponder is how the andalite fleet communicate with Homeworld and each other from nearly anywhere in the galaxy. The closer someone is the better, but to give you an idea, I could easily communicate real time with my ex brother-in-law if I wanted to because Homeworld is only at the edge of the Milky Way Galaxy. However, if I was on Homeworld and wanted to talk to someone who also had a transponder but was at the edge of the Andromeda closest to us, it would slow the transmission by a day at minimum."

"A day to cross 2.5 million light years…" Bruce could barely believe the words coming out of his own mouth, let alone hers, and he had to lean on Tony's desk to allow himself time to process the information.

Tony however…

"Please tell me you have one of those."

"I do. How about we see how you handle the schematics I gave you, and the tech I have for you and your team first?" She patted her bag to remind them of the purpose of her visit. "Then I might let you examine my Z-space transponder."

"What is Z-space short for?" Bruce questioned even though his mind was still rolling around the previous information.

"Z stands for zero, and space is well...space." Sephone answered. "It takes special engines to travel through it, but communication travels at speeds faster than light. It's like… Okay, keeping with Star Trek here, it's like entering warp speed on crack. There is no measurable time or space there, though. No, forget the Star Trek analogy because it's not travelling through space, it's more like temporarily tapping into another dimension to go from A to B." She huffed a small laugh. "Man if Akdarin could see me butchering this explanation…" She shook her head. "He would have an aneurysm. But, in my defence, this isn't something easy to explain."

"Can we talk to him? Get a better explanation from him?"

"I wish you could." She sulked as a sigh escaped her. "He's back on Homeworld, and even if I were allowed to reach out to him for you, I'm the only human he cared for. That being said he sure as Hell wouldn't be happy about this meeting. He may have fought for Earth's safety, but he was loud and clear about not approving of Jalthar and I at first, and for an andalite to be loud that's saying something."

"Not a very vocal species?" Tony questioned, his tone half joking and half sniping as his thumbs flew over the screen of his phone.

"Considering they have no mouths, not very vocal at all."

Both men looked at her now as Tony's thumbs stopped mid text and he lifted his gaze from his phone. "No mouths? Did I hear you right? How do you communicate with someone who has no mouth? How do they even eat?"

Sephone gave a mischievous smile before she made a show of closing her mouth with her lips pulled inward between her teeth so she couldn't be accused of ventriloquism. >I didn't say he couldn't communicate.< Her laughter filled the communication as both men nearly jumped out of the skin when they both heard her voice echo in their heads. >I just said they have no mouths.<

"How are you doing that?" Tony got up and got her laughing again, out loud this time, as he circled her to look for anything she could be using to project her voice into their heads. He looked to Bruce, his eyes a bit wide and disbelieving. "You heard her right!?"

"I...I believe so." Bruce slid his glasses up his nose while his heart hammered away in his chest as fears of the Hulk being taken over by mind control clawed their way through his calming techniques. He could feel the big guy stirring just below the surface and he caught himself eyeing the door, wondering just how far away he would have to get before any mind control she might have could take hold...and could he make it? He looked to Sephone, and took only a little comfort in her non-threatening laugh. "Were you," he paused as he had trouble believing what he was about to ask, "were you just inside our heads?"

"No no," she smiled with her answer, "I was only sending you a communication to show you how the andalites communicate. They call it Thought-Speak, but it's really just telepathic communication. Technically in your head but not? I can't make you do anything, I can't put thoughts in your head that are not your own, but it's how andalites talk in their natural state and when in a morph with no mouth. Even if they do have a mouth Thought-Speak is a better way to communicate in secret on missions.

Think of it like a radio. I can either let Tony alone hear my words, or I can make it broadband and let multiple individuals hear me. It can also be used to show images, or help show a friend or loved one what you're feeling, physically or emotionally. It won't make those feelings your own, but it will let you see how someone feels. Like if I'm in pain I could let you see how bad it was, but when I cut the feed you wouldn't feel it still."

"So...no mind control?"

Sephone took notice of the way Bruce held himself, how his body was on edge, his fingertips digging into the desk that he had his body resting against in an attempt to appear relaxed. She gave him a smile meant to be calming and shook her head. "No mind control Dr. Banner, I promise you. No andalite can take control of someone else's mind or actions."

Bruce relaxed as her words helped his heart start slowing down, and he nodded as he took off his glasses then wiped the lenses with the lower hem of his shirt. Even the big guy quieted back down. "Can you hear other's thoughts?"

"Yes and no… If I'm around a human I can only broadcast Thought-Speak. However, if I was around an andalite, or one of the animorphs in one of their morphed forms, I could communicate back and forth with them. Well, except for Toby, but he's a special case and we're not getting into that right now."

"Alright, but can we get into this morphing thing you keep mentioning?" Tony chimed in. "And what exactly is an 'Animorph'?"

"Trust me, if you could think of a better name, the others would love to hear it." Sephone chuckled. "They're humans who have the ability to morph into any animal or creature they come in contact with. Also, they were teenagers when they got the ability to morph, and teenagers give things dumb names. They just haven't been able to think of a better name.

As for the morphing, it is as it sounds. Think of it like tech-induced shapeshifting; andalites aren't born with it. The tech is a small blue cube that was created by the andalite scientist Escafil, and it was named after him. It allows someone who has the ability to morph to pass it on to someone else. By law it's to only be from one Andalite to another, but as you can see," she paused to gesture to herself, "some exceptions have been made. Before you ask, Mr. Stark, no I do not have the Escafil Device. I mean no offense when I say this, but while I'll happily give other tech to you and your friends, the Escafil Device is best left where it is."

"I... I'm sorry," Bruce apologized as he spoke up when Tony had opened his mouth to speak. "I have to cut in real quick. You said the tech is a small blue cube?"

Sephone nodded in affirmation. "That's correct."

"Does it, does it go by any other names? Rather, has it even gone by 'Tesseract'?"

Sephone quickly shook her head. "I know what you're talking about, and no. The blue cube I'm talking about is just a piece of morphing technology, nothing at all like the thing Loki was using during his invasion. Speaking of, why was he invading Earth? That makes no sense."

"Because he was a sadistic son of a bitch?" Tony sniped with a scowl, his mood turning sour at the mention of the God. He returned to the texts he had been sending out before he had stopped to question her about aliens with no mouths. "All he cared about was bringing death and destruction, what doesn't make sense about that?"

"It's just...odd. If you look at the different stories about him he's never tried to conquer Earth before. Did he cause trouble on Asgard and other realms? Yes, but he never tried to take over like that."

"No offense Sci-Fi," Tony looked up at her as he set his phone on his desk, "but I'm not about to figure out what Reindeer Games was up to. You can have that talk with Thor if he ever shows up."

"Loki isn't really a topic we talk about around here." Bruce cautioned as he turned his attention back to Tony's computer and changed out the current flash drive for the next. "He didn't just attack New York," he confessed as the new data loaded and showed on the holoscreen, "he attacked us personally beforehand. We all had our own encounters with him, none of which were pleasant, and we've done our best to move on. Some of us will take longer than others, but we have a silent, mutual agreement to never bring him up unless we have to."

"I'm sorry for what you all went through." Sephone ducked her head with chagrin as she offered up her condolences. "Thank you for sharing that with me, I won't bring it up again." She had noticed they kept using past tense, and wondered if it was just because what happened was in the past, or if it was because the God of Mischief was no more. It was obvious to her though, that these guys were not the ones to get more information from.

"You couldn't possibly have known, it's alright." Bruce aimed a reassuring smile at her before he focused on the holoscreen. "To go back to before I cut you off to ask about the cube... Morphing. How long does it last? Do you have full control over it?"

"Can you look like another person?" Tony threw in, darting his eyes from the holoscreen to her and then back to the screen as his leg bounced away under the desk.

"Starting from a human form, going to another person is an unpleasant experience in general, but with practice, it can be done.” Sephone got up to walk around the office as she talked, wanting to stretch her legs as well as taking in the view of the city that Tony had from his office. “Going from another creature, say andalite or even another alien or animal, to human is much easier. Each morph can only last two hours, though I try not to push it past an hour and a half. Stay any longer than two hours and that's your new body. Permanently. Their term for such a being is nothlit."

"That's why you keep leaving the room."

Sephone gave a short chuckle and aimed a smile over her shoulder at the billionaire before she returned her gaze out the window. The view from her apartment was nothing compared to this high rise view; neither building, however, had the view she got when she had taken to the skies in her recently acquired osprey morph to take it all in.

"But you were born like this." Bruce's face was scrunched in confusion as he tried to fully understand the new knowledge. "Why would you need to watch how long you're like this?"

"I was born human, yes, but rewind to an earlier part of the conversation. Remember how I told you Jalthar got ahold of the Escafil device for me? So I could blend in with the andalites?"

"You stayed in andalite form long enough to get stuck." Tony spoke his conclusion with a small scoff of a laugh. "Because if you kept making excuses almost every two hours they would have figured out your War Prince had broken the law."

"What consequences would he suffer if anyone found out?" Bruce pried, curious and wanting to better understand the situation.

From what he was understanding, Sephone's ex-husband had broken a law by sharing vast amounts of information with her, disguised her as an andalite with special technology so he could be with her, and then left her after over a decade. Was the punishment for breaking this law not as severe as she was making it out to be? And why did Jalthar risk an affair in the first place? If she wanted to, couldn't Sephone get him in trouble as payback? Would she herself suffer any from the fallout of the other andalites finding out about her true origins?

"He would have his War Prince title removed, and he would be removed from the military," Sephone answered before elaborating with, "but he wouldn't have been the only one punished." She turned away from the window and resumed meandering about. "Akdarin would lose his War Hero title, and their father would lose the rare title of War Commander Prince. Few andalites alive now have made it to that rank, and I would never forgive myself if I cost him such an honor. Even though they all knew the risk they still took me in because of Jalthar.

Jalthar knew I would never betray my...his...family after everything they risked for me. But we did make an arrangement for me to leave Homeworld instead of just staying there and possibly moving on with another mate."

"It was his idea for you to leave?"

Sephone aimed a bitter smile at the inquisitive Stark. "I made his new lover uncomfortable. It was ' _better for everyone involved_ ' if I just went back home." She folded her arms over her chest as her mood turned somber. "He added in that because we were no longer together it wasn't fair of me to ask my - dammit!" A deep frown pulled not only the corners of her mouth down, but also knitted her brows together in her frustration. "His. It wasn't fair of me to ask _his_ family to keep up the lies about me, to keep risking their reputations, or their titles, for someone they were no longer going to be affiliated with. So, we made our deal and I left."

Bruce frowned as he took in the pained frustration in her expression. "You were close to them weren't you?" He gently prodded, hoping the wound wasn't too deep.

Suddenly both he and Tony were caught off guard by the sudden wave of pain and regret that washed over them out of nowhere. If they thought about it, they didn't actually feel the emotions, but in a weird way it was as if the feelings had been a book that was suddenly opened to them. They could tell there were feelings, and could tell exactly what they were, but neither Bruce nor Tony actually felt the emotions. The two friends looked to Sephone when a profound sense of loss joined the emotional mix.

"Is that you?" Questioned Tony as he recalled her earlier words. "Is that what you're feeling right now?"

Sephone nodded to confirm his theory. "It's an example of what I explained earlier, about being able to show you exactly what I'm feeling."

She closed off the link, drawing her emotions back into herself, and frowned as she thought about Akdarin, and how close they had become by the time everything transpired the way it did. She could handle the loss of Jalthar, barely, though the wound would take time to heal, but she had never had a sibling until Akdarin had become her brother through marriage. She missed her new, now old, brother something terrible, and it weighed on her that she would never see him again.

"If you'd like I could show you an example of sending images," she offered with a weak smile. "Hopefully make up for opening up my head like that on you without warning?"

Before her offer had finished Bruce's request rushed out of his mouth.

"Could we see Homeworld? I'm sorry to talk over you, but that's an example I'd like to see." He realized as the words left his mouth that it might be too much for her after the feelings she had shown them and he quickly back tracked. "Unless it would be too painful for you, then you could show us something else."

Sephone's lips slipped from her weak smile, into an easy smile as she nodded to Bruce and moved her gaze to Tony. "Do I need to ask if you're okay with that example?"

"I hope not." He snarked in response; his tone was as playful as the grin he wore. "How else would I see an alien planet?"

Her smile grew a bit as she opened the link once more, broadcasting her memory of a morning she had awoken in time to watch the dark skies lighten to it's red and gold hues of waking hours.

As the skies grew bright with the light from two rising suns, the lighting cast over the field her family's home was in, setting ablaze the different shades of blue and green grasses they had around them. The forest that sprawled nearby was breathtaking, and the trees were wide around and tall, and looked as if they would tower over the giant sequoias in California's Sequoia National Park. The water from the lake nearby was reflecting the light from the morning suns, creating a squint-inducing glitter effect from the ripples of the water.

As with the emotions they had been given access to understand earlier, they weren't actually seeing any of this. It was just like visiting a memory. Although these things were all in their minds, the sights were still as breathtaking as if they were seeing them firsthand. So when the link was closed, Tony and Bruce were left disappointed when pulled from the memory.

For nearly a minute there was a stunned silence as Tony and Bruce, left in their shocked stupor, forgot how to speak. Even if they could make their mouths move, where would they even start?

The fact that there were two suns? How hot did that make Homeworld? If there were two suns - were there only two suns? - then how many moons did the planet have? They had water from what she showed them, but how much? Was the planet covered in different sized lakes, or were there oceans as well? What kind of marine life would the oceans have? Were there rivers? How were the trees so massive? Was it due to air quality, or were they just so ancient they could put Earth's famous trees to shame? Or hell, was that just somehow the normal size?

When they did find their voices it was in a verbal storm that rivaled the Great Galveston Hurricane in its onslaught. Even Bruce, who had chastised Tony earlier for asking back-to-back questions without giving Sephone a chance to answer any of the queries was having trouble focusing on one question. At one point, they debated to try to figure out who should get answers to their questions first by comparing what their questions were with one another.

During the scientific back and forth of the two great minds, Sephone watched and waited out the discussion, curious to see how they would settle the debate. She wouldn't know how they would have settled it, because part way through another argument for Tony to get answers first, a knock sounded at the closed office door. They hadn't spoken of expecting any guests, so, as her head snapped in the direction of the door, her posture went stiff and alert.

Her sudden tension didn't go missed by either of the two men as their conversation tapered off. Bruce shut down the holoscreen as Tony rose to his feet and made his way to the door. On his way he flashed a smile that had the desired effect of easing up some of her tension, though it only did so much. While he felt mildly guilty for startling Sephone, he had a feeling that the person on the other side of the door would more than make up for it.

"Don't worry, Ms. Martin, just one of the good guys."

Sephone's wary, confused look gave way to awe and surprise when Tony opened the door to reveal who the knock had belonged to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I have a no spoilers tick.
> 
> \-----
> 
> Sephone gave a mischievous smile before she made a show of closing her mouth with her lips pulled inward between her teeth so she couldn't be accused of ventriloquism. _Her laughter filled the communication as both men nearly jumped out of the skin when they both heard her voice echo in their heads._
> 
> "How are you doing that?" Tony got up and got her laughing again, out loud this time, as he circled her to look for anything she could be using to project her voice into their heads. He looked to Bruce, his eyes a bit wide and disbelieving. "You heard her right!?"
> 
> \-----
> 
> See what I mean? HTML is a tricky bitch 😅


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags were updated due to this chapter, but these are the new tags so you can also have a trigger warning:
> 
> Implied/Referenced Child Abuse  
> Child Abuse  
> Past Child Abuse  
> Past War Stories  
> Past Violence  
> Past Murder  
> Mentions of Bullying
> 
> If any of those things bother you I'm sorry but this is a chapter that takes a look into Sephone's past. You will see a different name, but the look into her past is before she adopted the name Sephone.
> 
> All of that being said, on with the chapter!

_"Heard you got suspended?"_

_The words were more of a statement than a question, but they still gained the attention of the young girl who had been sitting on the steps of the back porch for the last hour, despite how sore her rear was. It was better out here anyway..._

_She had come out here to escape the ire of her mother, who had been livid after finding out her child had been suspended for getting into a fight. Coming outside also helped her escape the yelling match that had erupted between her mother and grandmother when her grandmother caught the tail end of her punishment._

_As soon as her mother had made it home from work, the eleven-year-old was turned over her leg so Irene could deliver blow after blow from an unrelenting hand. Not once did she ask for Valen's side of what happened. Instead, when her mother's hand was sore was when the spanking finished, and Valen was told to apologize to her grandmother for having to be picked up from school, and then to her mother. Why did Valen have to apologize to Irene? Because Valen getting into a fight looked back on Irene, and her poor mother didn't deserve to lose face to her daughter's middle school. Valen knew better than to do anything that would embarrass her mother, and/or make her look bad._

_She also knew better than to tell her grandfather about what had happened when Irene got home and was told why her daughter would be home from school for the rest of the week. She knew better than to tell her grandfather about any abuse doled out by her only parent. He had no qualms threatening to take his granddaughter away from his daughter. He had done so once before._

_She had been eight then, and her mother had moved them out and into an apartment in an attempt to prove she could raise_ her _child without_ anyone's _help._

 _Things had gone somewhat smoothly until Irene found herself a boyfriend, Jeffrey, who moved in after only a few weeks of dating. Not too long after he moved in, Valen started calling her grandparents before bed to ask her grandmother to pick her up so she could sleep there instead of her mother's apartment. Her grandparents didn't question it much in the beginning, as the neighborhood was in a rough part of town and they chalked it up to her being afraid. But, after nearly a month of calls coming in night after night, her grandfather sat her down to try and get to the bottom of what was going on.  
_  
"Why do you keep asking to come home?"  
_  
Not wanting to give her mother any reason to be mad, she had lied to her grandfather and told him the neighborhood was scary and the neighbors were loud so she couldn't sleep._

 _When asked,_ "Are the neighbors the only reason you can't sleep?" _her response, delayed as it was, was to nod as her eyes darted away from his face. It was hard for the little girl to lie to the man she viewed as a father figure, but her mother's wrath was feared more than his displeasure._

 _At least when_ he _was mad at the girl he explained very clearly what she did wrong, and_ why _it was wrong. And when he disciplined her, he was fair in his punishments; he would put her in the corner for varied times, or make her be the one to clean a mess. His hand never struck her and she listened to him just fine. Yet, no matter what she did or didn't do, her mother's hand always seemed to strike her. And if she wasn't using her hands, she would use cruel words to break down little Valen more and more._

 _The next question had been even harder to avoid, because her grandfather had come right out and asked her,_ "Is it because of Jeff?" __

_Her head dropped as she gave it a shake and denied the calls had anything to do with him. She was kept over the weekend, and when Irene came by after work on Monday to pick her up from her parents' home Harold and Francine tried to talk to her about the living situation. They were careful not to put any blame on Irene - this was just an idea they had that might be more beneficial to their granddaughter._

_During the weekdays, couldn't Valen go ahead and stay at their place since she was still attending the school down the road? Irene could take her home Friday night, and they would pick her up Sunday night so she could be ready for school come Monday morning._

_Of course Irene only thought of how it would look for her to let her parents have Valen all week, when the whole point of moving out had been that she didn't need their help. Not wanting to lose face she turned down the request. When Harold had insisted that it would be better for Valen if she could sleep better before school Irene erupted in response, going on a tirade about knowing what was best for her daughter and her parents needed to butt out or they wouldn't see her again._

_Her threat pushed Harold to lay down a promise. If Irene tried to prevent them from seeing Valen, when all they had been trying to do was act on behalf of the child's well being, then he would call the Department of Children and Families. If her image was more important than her daughter's health, she didn't deserve the child and he would fight for custody to make sure she had a better life. He even asked her,_ "How do you think _that_ would make you look?" __

_His words silenced her tirade, and she even agreed to at least consider letting them have her during the weekdays...but when Irene took her home for the night the car ride was mental torture as Irene railed on the child for causing so much trouble._

_Why couldn't she just behave?_

_Why did she always have to be so much trouble?_

_Did she want to be taken away? She would never see her grandmother or grandfather again._

_Did she want to wind up in a foster home where the dad would molest her? He'd even let his friends join in because that's what bad children get!_

_Valen quit calling her grandparents' home after that. Everything was okay now, and the neighborhood wasn't as scary as before...supposedly. She got better at lying to hide what was happening at home, and just keeping quiet to avoid trouble as much as possible. Harold and Francine never learned about the car ride, and Valen never confirmed Harold's suspicions. Valen knew better than to tell him._

_In the end, around the time Valen was turning ten, Irene and her daughter moved back into the family home after Jeffrey up and left, claiming he would be back in a week only to never come back. Of course it had been Valen's fault for being such a brat all the time. How could anyone want to marry Irene when Valen just couldn't behave? Why would anyone sign up to be around such a horrible child?_

_If Valen would have had any spine in regards to her mother she would have snapped back,_ "Sorry I got too old for your boyfriend." _But, as it was, Valen took the verbal punishments for chasing Jeffrey away. Like a good daughter, Valen said nothing to her grandparents, saving her mother's face so they could continue to live in the home. She could stay silent if it meant she would be able to stay close to Harold and Francine._

_And now, she had to stay silent once again as Harold sat by her on the porch and looked at her with his kind, knowing eyes._

_"Want to tell me what happened?"_

_Valen looked down at the space between her feet and frowned. As happy as she was that someone was finally asking for her side of things, as always it was to make a difference. Why couldn't he have been home earlier? If he had been home Irene would have been on her best behavior. Maybe someone would have asked her what happened_ before _she was punished. If she had still been punished, she knew that had Harold been home the punishment would have actually been fair to what had happened._

_"A boy gave the wrong answer in class when he got called on, but when I answered it was right." She didn't look up as she explained what happened. The man beside her had fought in three different wars, how could she look at him when she had been so pathetic? "Because I made him look stupid in front of his friends, he pushed me down when we got outside the portable…"_

_"And they suspended_ you _for being pushed?"_

_Valen nodded her head, still not looking up. "Every time I got off the ground, or even started to, he pushed me back down again." She frowned and quickly wiped at the tears that were starting to well up in her eyes. Abused at home, bullied at school, when would she catch a break? Was she really so bad that she didn't deserve one? "The last time I tried to get up and he pushed me down, I kicked his leg. He went down...and cracked his head open on the sidewalk by the portable…"_

_Even though Harold never struck her, after what she had already gone through with Irene, seeing his hand move from its resting spot on his leg made the child flinch and tense up, ready for him to strike her as well. Instead of striking her, however, the hand gently came to rest between her shoulder blades, rubbing small circles. The soothing gesture drew more tears to her eyes that she wiped away as quickly as she had the others._

_Three wars and he didn't cry. She didn't have the right to cry. Of course her grandfather had never said such a thing, it was something Irene would point out to silence her daughter's cries and stop her tears. It made it easier to hide away the emotional proof of the damage she was inflicting._

_"So, to make sure I'm following you…" He switched to rubbing his hand up and down her spine. "You were pushed for giving a right answer?" She gave a nod, but still didn't look at him, not wanting him to see the proof of her unshed tears. "And when you tried to get up, he kept pushing you down, so you kicked him and he fell?" Another nod. "That was all you did to him?"_

_"Yes sir." Her reply was whispered but her voice still trembled as she feared what might come next._

_"What happened next?"_

_"The teacher came out of the portable when she heard him and the other kids screaming about the blood. They told her I fell and when he went to help me up I kicked him for no reason."_

_"And your friends didn't stand up for you?" Harold let his hand rest on her shoulder while giving it a comforting squeeze._

_"I don't have friends grandpa… The girls don't like me because I'm not as girly as them, and the boys just...hate me."_

_Harold gave a heavy sigh as he scooted closer to his granddaughter on the stairs and tucked her against his side, kissing the top of her head and rubbing her arm. "Between me and you...bullies are walking, talking pieces of shit."_

_Valen wiped her eyes dry once more before she looked up at him to see him looking out at their backyard, bordered by the palm trees and pine trees. She could tell from his stare that he wasn't really seeing the woods but through them; he got that same look in his eyes when he was visiting his memories, or had gotten lost in them. Whenever she saw that look she always wondered where his mind was. Sometimes she could tell if it was good or bad by the slight lift or drop in the corner of his mouth. Other times it was a blank slate she just couldn't read._

_"Gramps…?"_

_Harold blinked himself back to the present and looked down at her, an apologetic half smile on his lips. "Sorry...was just thinking about a guy I met during the war. Have I ever told you what made me fight through three different wars?"_

_Valen thought about the few war stories he had been allowed to tell her, and when none of them had that context she gave her head a small shake. "No sir."_

_"Would you like to hear it?"_

_Sephone couldn't stop herself from lighting up at the thought of hearing one of her grandfather's war stories; and it was a personal one, not one told to make company laugh! "Yes please!" She replied eagerly, her eyes growing wide as she looked up at him._

_"It was my second time in Europe, honestly couldn't tell you anymore which country my company and I were in at that point, but the boys and I got captured by the enemy. Only, it wasn't the normal enemy. We were captured by a group called Hydra. Nasty group." He shook his head and looked out at the backyard again. "A lot of us had already been in the fray once - went home to see to injuries and take a quick leave - but when I went back the company had gained a few tenderfoots, new guys, and their first time on tour they wind up prisoners of war."_

_"That had to be scary for them."_

_"It was. It was scary for us all…" Harold looked at her, an apprehensive look in his eyes. "This story. Your grandmother and mother are_ not _to hear I told it to you. Understood?"_

_"What story?" She questioned, giving him one of the conspiratory smiles they shared with each other whenever he was breaking the rules and she was there to witness it._

_Harold chuckled softly and rubbed her arm once more before his hand stayed on her shoulder. "That's my girl." His eyes went back to the backyard as he continued. "What made it scary for the new guys, and even some of us seasoned soldiers, was that we were all taken into a warehouse, or factory - that part's always been fuzzy since we were taken there at dark, and also escaped at night - but we were sectioned off into cages, as many men could fit per cage._

_"Every now and then a few soldiers were taken, and some were brought in, but the ones who were taken away...they never came back. Only their screams would find us while we waited to see what would happen."_

_As ice water trickled down her spine, chilling her in the warm weather of her hometown, Valen understood why he had requested the secrecy between them. This was already the darkest story she had been allowed to hear, yet she was hanging on to every word, as if losing focus on the story for even a moment would cause her to miss something important._

_"Thing is though, with new soldiers come new stories. Stories of Captain America and his Howling Commandos. The stories always sounded too good to be true, because how could a company of less than ten men break into an enemy camp and raze the whole thing to the ground? Problems started when the new soldiers tried to ease the worries of the tenderfoots by telling the stories they heard, and promising that Cap and his boys would rescue all of us."_

_"But…" Sephone stopped herself before she could continue her interruption. She ducked her head as she mentally chided herself for interrupting an adult while they were talking._

_But Harold didn't seem mad as he gently pushed for her to continue. "Go on…'but', what?"_

_"But they were just trying to give them hope."_

_"You're right, but sometimes you can't let someone see your head held high. Sometimes you have to keep quiet while you work out a strategy. It's even worse when you're in an enemy camp though, and that hope gives you the wrong kind of courage. The kind of courage that takes away common sense and replaces it with thoughts of being the hero, or being stupid enough to be an unarmed man challenging the guy with the gun that just needs to be aimed."_

_"More people died."_

_Harold nodded in affirmation to the barely whispered musing of his audience. "After an actual escape attempt had been made and failed, a few prisoners were shot down just because they were the ones closest in range to the head guard. We were told to stop spreading pointless hope, that all we were doing was hastening the death of our comrades. For a while the stories stopped, but soldiers were still being taken. Finally a new group came in, mostly older soldiers but another couple of fresh boys who wouldn't stop crying. They knew they might as well be dead, it was just a matter of_ when _._

_"Then one of the seasoned boys of the new group who didn't know any better - big guy with a bushy handlebar mustache and a bowler hat of all things - waited until the last guard had started for the door before he started telling the story of Captain America and his Commandos. He wasn't being quiet with it either, and we found out later he wanted that guard to hear, wanted his attention on him. The guard came over and told him to keep his mouth shut or he would kill the soldiers who couldn't stop crying. Without the crying soldiers he wouldn't need to tell his story."_

_A grin lifted the corner of his mouth as he continued. "When Bowler Hat stopped talking, the guard made his way to the door, but an English accent picked up where Bowler Hat left off, just as loud and a few cages down. The guard headed to the cage and stopped a couple feet away. Instead of saying anything to the British guy, he turned and aimed his gun at another soldier, one who had been crying before, and pulled the trigger._

_Now that place was always loud, with whatever they had going on there and the guys in the cages talking to each other, but after that gunshot you could hear a pin drop. The Brit opened his mouth to speak and the Nazi turned the gun on him this time, finger just hovering there over the trigger. 'One more word,' he said to the Brit. 'One more word, you die.'_

_And everyone waited to see how the Brit would react… But then a new voice spoke up at the entrance of the room. Everyone turned their heads and there he was, stars and stripes and all. Captain America. He said to that guard, 'Go ahead. Show these men how afraid you are of_ words _. If you're this scared of_ words _, imagine how scared you'll be when we_ really _come after you hateful monsters.'" Harold's shoulders shook with his chuckles. "I swear that Nazi shit himself when he saw Captain America standin' there with his shield in front of him, ready to fight."_

_"Did they fight?"_

_Harold looked down at Valen and grinned. "They didn't have to. Cap moved towards the bastard and he backed up so fast you'd think the Reaper was comin' for him. Backed right up against the cage the Brit was in and before he could fix his mistake Brit got ahold of him, arm against the front of his neck in damn good choke hold. Cap knocked him out cold instead of waiting for the choke hold to do it for him and the Brit got the cell keys before he let the bastard drop. The next hour or so is pretty much a blur, because as soon as Cap and his comrades started using the keys to empty the cages we all made our ways out of the holding area as quick as we could and followed the Howling Commandos as they let us into the woods and on our way to freedom. Things start clearing up again about the time we made it to the camp the Army was waiting for us at._

_Once I was looked over by the medics I made sure to find Captain Rogers and his Commandos and thank them for saving my life. We didn't really get to speak much, but our meeting still changed my life. I'm not a God fearin' man Valen, but I thought I knew I was dead when my company was captured. Made peace with it. Then one day I have a new lease on life courtesy of that man. The soldier who got shot in retaliation for the Brit talking, could well have easily been me. Any of the soldiers who were taken away could have been me as well. But, thanks to their rescuing us, I was here to keep fighting the good fight. They put their lives on the line for all of us men but I was going to make damn sure I didn't let that rescue go to waste, because who knew how many people I could keep helping if I stayed in the fight."_

_"What happened to him? Captain America? The Commandos?"_

_Harold gave a slow, heart heavy sigh. "Cap was in an accident, went down in a plane over the ocean during that war. Shame too, didn't get to see us win. Only one or two of 'em are left now, I think, don't really know. Few of us are left from that war since not all of them were young lads going into it, but it was that second tour in the war I learned the most from." He looked down at Valen, staring straight into her eyes to make sure she was listening to him now. "You can never let your enemy know they don't have you beat. Never let them know you still have hope. And in the end, when that door opens you get the hell out and don't look back. You hear me?"_

_Valen's eyes held her grandfather's intense stare, her mind reeling with so many questions she didn't know where to start. She almost asked herself if he knew the truths she tried to hide, but there was no mistaking the knowing look staring back at her._

_"What if… What if there's nowhere to go?" Her voice was just barely above a whisper as she asked her timid question._

_"The door will open when there is somewhere to go," he answered, his gaze drifting back to the yard, and his arm going back around her shoulders as he tucked her protectively against his side. "You just have to keep your eyes out, and be smart about which door you run through."_

\-----

The conversation came slamming back into Sephone's mind as she stared, awestruck, at Captain Steve Rogers himself. Her blood rushed in her ears and all the moisture from her mouth was suddenly gone as she watched Tony greet a piece of her grandfather's history. Not just any piece either - this was one of the men who saved Harold's life.

She was still speechless when Tony directed Steve's attention towards her, and she saw his mouth move but her state of shock coupled with the blood rushing in her ears had the world temporarily on mute. It was Bruce's hand on her shoulder, grounding her to the present, that brought her from her stupor.

"Sci-Fi, you alright there?"

Sephone gave Tony a quick nod, and Bruce an appreciative look. "Sorry, just...not who I was expecting." She gave a sheepish smile to the billionaire and turned her attention to Steve, walking forward and extending her hand. "Captain Rogers, it's an honor and a pleasure to meet you, Sir." 

Steve flashed her his famous war bonds selling smile as he grasped her hand in his, both of them shaking and releasing one another's hands. "Please, call me Steve. It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Martin."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the dark chapter, but I wanted to show a bit of her past and what she comes from. I tried to add as many new appropriate tags as possible, but if there is one you think I should've added please let me know and I'll add it!
> 
> Also, the quote from Steve is an actual quote from the She-Hulk #10 comic.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all… Before you read this chapter, say thank you to my friend Ashley. My brain got super stuck on this chapter for weeks, and this girl handed me the most golden fucking nugget of all. If it had not been for her helping me, there's a very real chance I would still be stuck staring at my phone. Not only did she break the dam, but she was there when the final edit was driving me nuts. This chapter was originally much larger, but thanks to Ashley it is going to be two chapters, and the second one already has a head start so hopefully it won't take me another month to update.
> 
> Though in my defense part of the reason for my delay is I write this on a phone, not a laptop, and Google Docs went down last week so I could only get this to open some of the time. It got fixed the other day so editing was able to get caught up so you guys could have this.
> 
> Alright, enough yammering on. As always I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Trigger warning: Minor funeral scene, nothing graphic.

As Tony's office grew cramped at the arrival of Thor, Natasha, and Clint, the group migrated to Tony's penthouse lounge where drinks were passed around to help everyone in the group relax. Sephone, however, took the chance to slip away for a couple minutes of privacy. It was also a chance to rest in her andalite form, as well as give herself some time to get her collective shit together.

The day had proven to be more stressful and emotional than she had planned, and because of that her batteries were all draining fast, but she was pretty sure the emotional stuff was done and over with for now. Talking about Tommy and the night her life changed had been difficult and emotional on its own. But then having the sight of Steve Rogers cause a memory of her grandfather to come rushing back at her so suddenly, that had been a heavy hit against her state of mind. Excited as she was to meet Steve Rogers, as well as the others, she was ready to go home and climb into bed at this point.

Back in the penthouse lounge, Clint was studying Tony with a skeptical look as he waited for him to bust out laughing, or at least crack one of his annoying grins, but when nothing happened Clint shifted his attention to Bruce. Bruce, much to the archer's dismay, nodded to confirm what Tony had filled them in on while they waited for Sephone to join them in the room.

"You guys are serious?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Tony questioned as he gestured to his face, drawing attention to how irritated he looked at not being believed. "Why would I even joke about something like this?"

"To verify what Stark says, I did hear of the Andalite-Yeerk war several decades ago." Thor spoke up from his spot, earning the attention of his friends while he lounged back on the cushions of the smaller of the two couched in the penthouse. "We did not know what it was called yet at the time, though Odin did debate sending in help. After much discussion with the elders it was agreed that, should the Einherjar get infested and Asgard fell, more than just a couple of galaxies could be affected. They had their means of travel, but if they had the bifrost-"

"The universe could have been lost," Sephone finished his sentence as she walked into the lounge, a shy smile on her lips. "Odin was right to keep his army away, even if the help would've been nice. Sorry for interrupting."

Thor smiled warmly at the newcomer. "No harm done, Lady Sephone," he replied before pulling a flask from the pouch at his waist and taking a sip of the wine contained inside. "I am sorry Asgard could not have been more help."

"No harm done, Your Highness," she smiled at the god.

"Lady Sephone, if we are to be friends, please call me Thor."

The two shared a nod and a smile with one another as Tony brought a glass of whiskey to her before leading her to an empty chair that sat her at such an angle it enabled her to face everyone in the room. She thanked Tony and took the offered seat, as well as a sip from the drink once she was settled.

"So, while you were off doing your thing, I filled the kids in about who and what you are." Tony explained as he took his own seat in the chair that was a little to her right. "Hope you don't mind, thought it could move things along quicker."

"No that's fine, it does help," Sephone assured him before she sipped at her drink. "Are there any ques-"

"Oh I got plenty." Clint cut her off, his grey-blue eyes staring coldly at her from his spot on the couch, sandwiched between Natasha and Steve. He wasn't trying to be rude, but his nerves were shot at being around an alien-but-not-alien-with-alien-abilities and he was doing poorly at controlling his tone. "Tony said you're a telepath, you can send words to our minds?"

Sephone nodded. "Yes, to a degree. It's a way of communicating, not controlling, as I explained to Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner. I can also project my memories to share them with you, or let you see what emotions I'm feeling or even what pain I might be dealing with. However, in no capacity can I control your actions or thoughts."

"Can you prove that you can't or won't control us?"

"I'm sorry Agent Barton. I can only give you examples of what I can do, I have no proof that I'm not able to control you. All I can ask is for the time and chance to prove that to you."

The corners of Clint's mouth turned downwards as he sat back in his spot on the couch. He tried to look calm, but his worry and PTSD were working together to bring his eyebrows together and make his leg bounce despite his best efforts to still it. He was aware of Nat's comforting knee-to-knee touch, as well as the discreet knee-to-knee touch from Steve, and while it did help to a degree, his fears were still making him somewhat irrational.

Sephone noticed the guilt in Thor's eyes as he gave Clint a fleeting glance and thought back to Bruce's words from earlier.

_"Loki isn't really a topic we talk about around here. He didn't just attack New York, he attacked us personally beforehand. We all had our own encounters with him, none of which were pleasant, and we've done our best to move on. Some of us will take longer than others…"_

Clint's experience, whatever it may have been, was obviously what had him so tense around her. Going off of his focus in the conversation, she figured Loki must have used mind control on him somehow. But that did get her gears turning as Loki never resorted to mind control in the myths - trickery and word play to manipulate - but never mind control. _A question for another time…_ She reminded herself as she focused on Clint, who was staring at her and without being discreet in his own studying of her. 

"Agent Barton…" Sephone took a slow sip of her drink and set it on the side table as she thought about her next words carefully. "May I show you? Let you see an example of what I'm able to do?" She saw his jaw start to clench and held her hands up in a peaceful manner. "I promise not to make you do anything, but I think I can show you that I don't want to hurt you, while letting you see there's no control taken away."

"And if I say no?" Clint arched a challenging eyebrow at her.

"Then you say no." She shrugged and set her hands on her lap. "And, I get to figure out how to convince you otherwise. If you need to think about it, then that's fine too, but I'll respect your answer either way."

"Say yes, Loxley."

Clint turned his eyes to Tony; his expression of "Are you kidding?" read loud and clear on his face as he questioned instead, "Why should I?" He had tried to keep his tone as even as possible, but even he could hear the disbelief that wove itself into his words.

"Because earlier she showed Banner and I what her Homeworld looked like using the same technique she'd use on you. It doesn't feel like anything. It's just like watching a movie of someone else's memory in your head." Tony looked down at the liquid in his glass, debating how to word his next point without blatantly giving away what was Clint's story to tell. "I remember what happened, I remember how hard it's been for you since then." He lifted his gaze to meet with Clint's still disbelieving stare. "With that in mind, I think you should let her show you."

Clint and Sephone met eyes as he turned his attention back on her. "You said I can think about it?"

"As long as you need to." She confirmed before picking her glass back up and taking a slow sip from it. "Before we move onto the tech I brought for you guys, are there any other questions?"

"I have one or two about this morphing thing Tony talked about."

Sephone looked to the woman who sat beside Clint. The redhead was staring at Sephone with such intense eyes it felt as though Natasha was staring into her soul. "What do you want to know?"

"How does it work? Do you just have to see us to look like us?"

"Gods, I wish that was all it took," Sephone bemoaned with a chuckle at the end. "You have no _idea_ how handy that would be!" She shook her head with a disappointed sigh. "No, to be able to morph I have to acquire your DNA. It's one hundred percent painless, some people notice and some don't, but all it takes is a slightly longer than normal touch and I have a new form to use."

"You...You didn't 'acquire' me earlier, did you?" Bruce inquired warily as his brain replayed earlier, going every moment of contact to figure out if he had felt anything different during any of those times. He didn't want to run the risk of offending her, should she think he was low key accusing her of doing so, but the worry in his tone was pretty self-incriminating. He trusted her so far, but it was still a loosely based trust that was ready to crumble at a moment's notice.

Despite her attempt to keep her face neutral, the distraught look in her eyes gave the girl away. "No. To acquire your DNA would mean taking in whatever alterations were caused by the gamma radiation. I don't even want to begin to think of what a catastrophe that would be."

"Is there a reason, besides two hulks being bad, that would make it catastrophic?" Tony questioned while chewing on some cashews.

"Morphing can be...unstable… It isn't perfect, therefore it does have its flaws; one of the flaws is having an allergic reaction to a morph. If I acquired his altered DNA and had such a reaction, I'd go through a very unpleasant process called _hereth illint_ where his DNA would be expelled from my body...in its proper form. But...DNA doesn't carry memories. So we'd either wind up with another Banner, another Hulk, or a weird mix of the two, but no version of them would have the memories."

Natasha opened her mouth to ask a questions, but paused to make sure she was about to ask, "There would be Bruce, you, and then possibly _another_ Hulk?"

"A Hulk running only on base instincts, yes." Sephone answered. "It's not much fun for the one going through the _hereth illint_ either. Until that DNA is expelled morphing is uncontrollable and made even more unstable by emotions. The body just starts cycling through morph after morph, sometimes returning to the main form and sometimes not. There's no telling how long it will take to happen either, but it has to happen naturally and there's no way to force it."

"So getting the DNA for Cap or Bruce could cause this her...her…?"

" _Hereth illint_ ," Sephone gently provided Tony with the alien words he was looking for.

" _Hereth illint_ , thank you. It would cause that?"

"Any DNA I attempt to acquire can cause it but I think, with the gamma radiation and the serum, the allergic reaction might be more likely. I don't know for sure that it would, but that's not something I really want to find out."

"Would that happen with Thor?" Questioned Steve, trying to keep up with the rules of morphing. "He's not chemically altered."

"No, but he is a God," Sephone countered, "he would be another one of those 'I don't really want to know' acquisitions. No offense, Your High-...sorry, Thor."

Thor smiled at her. "No offense has been taken Lady Sephone. While I am disappointed I won't be able to see how handsome I am without a mirror…" He paused to chuckle at his own joke. "I understand, and after hearing your explanation I agree with the possible concern."

"If you were to acquire Thor," Clint spoke up, easily gaining Sephone's attention as well as the attention of the others, "would you be able to lift Mjolnir?" She noticed that his tone was now inquisitive, and lacking in the hostility it carried earlier, and attributed it to the whiskey he had been nursing. She was glad it was obviously helping take off some of his edge.

"I don't even know if I could lift it now," Sephone responded with a hint of a playful smile, "but unless I would be able to lift it normally, then no. Even though I would have Thor's DNA, and would look, sound, smell, everything else like him, I wouldn't be _him_. I would be a hammerless version of Thor."

Clint gave Thor, who suddenly looked chagrined, a smirk as if he were in on a joke that Thor was obviously not pleased with. Even Tony looked amused as he smiled behind his next sip from his glass. Clint settled his gaze back on Sephone as he gave her a look of consideration before downing the last of his drink. The glass thudded lightly on the coffee table as the archer leaned forward to set it down, resting his elbows on his knees and folding his hands together as he regarded her.

"Show me."

All eyes trained on the archer as he and Sephone held each other's gazes. Sephone's gaze was hesitant, showing she was worried how her display would go over with him. Clint's was challenging, showing he was doubtful she could show him anything that would change his mind. _At least,_ she thought to herself, _he's willing to give me a chance._

>Are you sure you're ready?< She questioned via thought-speak, broadcasting it to everyone in the room so they could get a sample of the telepathic communication.

If she had looked at anyone besides Clint she would have seen the way Thor's face broke into a wide smile, his eyes lighting up with his excitement at getting to experience for himself the form of communication he had only heard of. She would have seen the mixture of surprise, awe, and slight concern on Steve's face. She also missed the impossible to stop look of startled surprise on Natasha's face; a look that was quickly covered up by indifference. It was only Clint's look that mattered the most to her right now, seeing as he obviously had the most aversion to her.

Although he, like Natasha, had tried to put up a facade of indifference, for one minute his nostrils flared slightly and a muscle in his jaw flexed. It was there then gone, but for someone who was as fluent in micro expressions as Sephone was, it was easily noticed. As was the way his body had tensed up.

Sephone kept his gaze, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible while awaiting his answer. When it came in the form of a single nod of Clint's head, she posed another query to the archer. >Is it okay with you if I share our communication with the others as well?< She could have spoken the question aloud, but she wanted him to get used to hearing her voice in his head.

Clint weighed her question in his mind, unsure if he wanted the others to be put at risk for being controlled. But, Tony and Bruce had already experienced what she was offering up and they seemed fine. Even though everyone seemed fine so far, and he still felt hesitant about it, Clint gave her another nod and tried to mentally prepare himself for whatever she was about to show him.

Sephone glanced at the others, sans Tony and Bruce since they had seen an example already. >Do any of you object to me giving you an example at the same time?< When her inquiry wasn't met with objections from the others, she gave her own small nod and began.

The first thing she projected was her grandfather's image as she remembered him, smiling with mischief in his old eyes that took away some of the aging from his face.

>My grandfather, Harold Winkharnt, for all intents and purposes, was my father. My own dad left when I was a baby so I never really knew him, but my grandfather taught me all the lessons a father should teach a daughter.<

Clint's chest ached (but...not really…?) as she spoke of the man he was seeing in his head. He could feel how much she missed and loved him, but he was aware that her emotions were only partially his as she projected them. As he paid attention to her, he looked to the others to see them watching her as he had been. It did relieve quite a bit of his anxiety to realize that he didn't lose touch with his surroundings while she projected her images and thoughts into his head. The amount of freedom he had was far more than what he had when Loki had controlled him. Then, he was numb to everything, even pain. Now, he hadn't lost any senses, in fact, having her emotions and thoughts projected to him almost made him feel more aware of his surroundings. He made a mental note to ask the others if they had the same experience.

The image of the old man changed suddenly, to an old army photo, and if Clint studied it close enough he could see the old man from before.

>This is how he looked when Captain Rogers saved him and his company from Hydra.< She turned her attention to the Captain. >It's alright if you don't remember him,< she said as she smiled at Steve. >You and your Howling Commandos saved so many people - men and women - during the war. While my grandfather will always be memorable to me, it would be silly to expect you to remember the names and faces of all the people you saved.<

Steve returned her smile while he nodded his head. "Thank you for understanding."

>Of course.<

Sephone turned her attention to the other three who were experiencing everything she was putting out, scanning Thor and Natasha's faces, but focusing on Clint. >Are you alright so far?< Though her concern was mostly for Clint, she did still care if Natasha and Thor were in need of a break as well.

"I'm fine," Natasha answered before she took a slow sip of her drink.

"Aye, please continue!" Thor boomed excitedly as he smiled at the girl in front of him.

Sephone smiled in return, thanks to Thor's easily contagious happiness, as she projected the aged image of her grandfather again. >My grandfather was loving and loyal, and he'd do anything he could to help anyone out, no matter what walk of life they came from.< As she described his character she showed them silent memories of him helping her relatives out, and helping strangers both rich and poor. >He taught me most of everything I know up until he passed…<

A faint wave of pseudo pain passed through everyone's chests as she thought about the wake, and seeing Harold lying there in the coffin.

She had wanted so badly to hold his hand one last time, but at the time she had been too afraid to touch the corpse of her grandfather, despite the fact that others had leaned down to place a goodbye kiss to the dead man's forehead, or merely gave his hand a farewell squeeze. He had always been mischievous, loved to play pranks, and at that moment she had finally understood firsthand why people in books and movies talked about wanting someone to sit up and laugh at everyone. She had mentally begged him to end the prank and sit up. She'd forgive him for such a horrible prank if he'd just sit up already. But he never did.

Without him there, who would be there to keep her grandmother sane and sober? Who would be there to protect her from her mother? Those had been some of her worried thoughts at the time, and as she lost herself in the memory those same thoughts accidentally went out to the others in the room.

"Sephone…"

It was Bruce's soft voice, laced with concern, that broke her free from the pull of the dark hole she was sliding down. Her eyes went to him and she blinked herself back to the room, noticing for the first time that her eyes were wet again as a fat tear dropped down each cheek.

She cleared her throat and quickly wiped at her eyes, flushing with the embarrassment of losing control of her emotions like that while trying to show Clint and the others that they had nothing to worry about. "Crap, I'm sorry," she apologized aloud. She needed to give her mind a second to rest, since broadband communication this detailed was strenuous after an already emotionally-charged day. "I didn't mean to flood you guys like that, my grandfather is a very sore subject for me. Pretty sure he always will be."

"We have all lost someone, Lady Sephone," Thor spoke softly as he offered a sympathetic and knowing smile, "we understand. I myself have had two fresh losses but, thank the Norns, I have the love of my life to help me through this hard time."

"I had someone too," She smiled a little. "Jalthar and I had been together for close to a year when Gramps passed. He was the only one to help me through it, but he was everything I needed at the time…" She chuckled softly as a memory of her ex helped to lighten her mood.

While she and Jalthar had broken apart for a painful reason, the whole rest of their relationship was filled with happy memories that still served to help her feel better. With help from Akdarin, who had spoken to her with a previously broken heart himself, she was able to come to the decision that she would still use the good times to help with any bad times she might go through.

_"Happy memories should never be forgotten." He had said to her while resting their foreheads together in a soothing gesture. "No matter what comes after, it cannot ruin those precious moments. My brother may be a fool, but you deserve to keep the joy your memories bring you."_

Leaving her memory of her friend, she smiled at no one in particular and slowly shook her head in amusement. "He even stole one of the confiscated Skrit Na ships just to come to me since the funeral was held in a state other than where I lived at the time. He landed it in the woods, changed into a Cooper's Hawk, and flew to the hotel my mom and gram had us put up in. He stayed until they showed up, turning into a lizard when we heard them outside the hotel door, and slipping out into the hall when they came in."

"Sounds like you have yourself a good partner."

Sephone looked at Steve and gave him a subdued smile. "I did… He and I are no longer together; it's part of why I returned here to Earth. Given what was going on, I couldn't stay on Homeworld any longer."

Steve angled his head down a bit as he mentally kicked himself. "Sorry, I didn't know."

"It's alright, Captain Rogers," she spoke gently, trying to assuage his worries that he had upset her, "you said it yourself, you didn't know." She let her gaze roam across the faces of the others in the room as she addressed them all. "There is a lot you all don't know about me, and although there are things in my past I won't be as willing to answer, because they might share the private business of an individual besides myself, I'd be more than happy to answer any questions about myself."

Clint cleared his throat just loud enough to get her attention, and when she looked at him, he asked her, "So where's the part that says you won't try to control us?"

Sephone nodded and took a deep breath as she shifted her attention to Tony. "I'm going to need a stronger drink."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long to happen but, as I said at the beginning, I have a bit of a head start on the next one so hopefully it won't take long to get it to you guys.
> 
> The next chapter will actually be the last introduction chapter before we finally move on to the rest of the story! 😃
> 
> As always, comments and feedback are loved and appreciated. ❤


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't express how sorry I am that this chapter took as long as it did. I got it done and when going over the final read through I *thought* I hated it, so I set it to the side for scraps in case and started rewriting. Went to go grab some scraps from the first draft and realized that I didn't hate the whole thing, just a certain part, so I did another read through and here you guys go!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy, and hey, this next chap is pretty far along so here's hoping my muse keeps singing their songs.
> 
> Trigger Warning: Mentions of mental illness, Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

"Okay."

It was a simple word. But this simple word had more than one function in its current use. It was a push to herself – a confirmation that yes, she was about to relive a heavy memory, but she could do it – but it was also an anchor for Sephone, helping her dig into the metaphorical ground instead of tucking tail and running. Which was precisely what she wanted to as she finished off the tumbler of whiskey, that Thor had added just a couple drops of Asgardian wine to.

Thor had warned her it was strong, (“Not meant for mortal men.” As he had put it.) hence only putting a couple of drops into the whiskey Tony had prepared for her. Despite the warning from the God, strong was what Sephone needed for the memories she was about to dive into.

She looked at Clint, opened her mouth like she was about to speak, but then shut it and looked at Tony. "I know you said you filled them in, what all did you say about the yeerks?"

"Body snatching alien slugs.” The billionaire shrugged while pouring her another drink; he set it by her on the table before he added on, "And, you say they're not a problem anymore."

"Body snatching…? Well, I mean...you're not wrong. They do kind of body snatch.” As she spoke she gave a slight shrug while also raising an eyebrow and tilting her head slightly to the side with the lift of her shoulder. She turned her attention to Clint. “They do take control of bodies, but it’s via the brain – physically, not telepathically speaking. He is right about the fact that they’re alien slugs though, and that they aren’t a problem anymore. The andalites took care of the last wave, so everyone is safe from that threat for good.

“The short version about the yeerks is basically, they were once just slugs who lived on a planet, inside pools that were scattered about the planet’s surface, and the rays from their version of a sun was their only source of sustenance. Because they were so reliant on these Kadrona rays they were confined to those pools, with one exception. They shared the planet with another sentient race, the Gedd, which are the equivalent of Earth's monkeys. Not the best creature they could pick for a Host, but it was better than swimming round and around in a pool you could never escape. And, in exchange for playing host, the yeerks helped the Gedd survive their slow extinction and flourish...as well as can be expected for a slow breeding species.”

“So, when Prince Seerow introduced them to Andalite technology, it was like they hit the ultimate jackpot. The best analogy I can think of for it is what I said to Mr. Stark and-“

“Tony.”

Sephone looked over at the one who interrupted her with a questioning look on her face.

“Or just Stark works,” he clarified as he quirked a brow and grinned, “or Iron Man. Either way, no one here calls me _Mr._ Stark, got it Sci-Fi?”

“Got it, Stark.” She chuckled and quirked a grin at him before she looked back to the others. “So, as I said to Stark and Dr. Banner earlier, Prince Seerow's act of kindness was akin to handing over a blank check to someone who couldn’t handle sudden wealth. In their attempts to soak in that new tech, things went very wrong, very fast, and a _lot_ of races and planets suffered for it. It caused the creation of a law, called Seerow's Kindness, that prohibits the sharing of our technology with any other race.”

“And when was this invasion here?”

Steve's inquiry drew Sephone’s attention back to the super soldier on the couch, her eyes glancing over Clint in the process. Upon seeing the way the archer was finally leaning back into the cushions of the couch, though his body still carried a touch of hesitation, some of Sephone’s worries were put at ease with the realization that Clint was starting to feel more relaxed around her.

The sooner more of the hostility left the room, the better she would feel. The experiences from her childhood still affected her more than she cared to admit - certain things can never be shaken, the mental trauma was far too deeply ingrained – so she always tried to make those around her at least just be able to tolerate her.

She didn’t blame Clint for his current state, not one bit, but it would be really nice if his eyes could warm up some, or if his jaw could fully unclench while he was listening to her. Instead of focusing solely on what hostility and tension were left over from the beginning, she shifted her focus to the progress they had made so far and answered Steve’s question. 

“From ‘66 to 2000, but I was only aware of the last two years of it.”

“34 years?” Incredulity filled Steve’s voice with his new query.

“Yes, but they’re all gone from Earth. Any that are left here are living peacefully as _nothlits_ , or are back on their home planet, swimming in their pools and rebuilding their damaged relationship with the Gedd.”

“I’m sorry,” Natasha finally spoke up, joining the conversation, “ _nothlits_?”

“You’re fine.” Sephone answered as she let her gaze rest on the intimidating ex-Red Room spy. “I forgot there were things I went over with those two earlier that I hadn’t brought up here yet.” She gestured vaguely to Tony and Bruce without taking her eyes off the redhead. “A _nothlit_ is someone who exceeded the two-hour time limit on their morph and is now stuck in that form for good. For example, I’d be technically speaking considered a _nothlit_ because my andalite form is my base form rather than the human form I was born with. A _nothlit_ can no longer morph but, if they can get their hands on the Escafil device again, then they’d be able to morph. Here’s the thing though, your DNA gets rewritten to that new form after those two hours, and any morph DNA you had acquired is gone. Your body is as if you never morphed in the first place, so if you can get ahold of the Escafil device you’d just be able to start gaining new morphs and your original form is lost forvever.”

“Then how do you look like yourself? Shouldn’t you have to pick a new face?”

“Under normal circumstances you would be absolutely right,” Sephone answered while nodding her head, “but before I gave up my human DNA, Akdarin suggested they preserve some of my DNA so I could go back to my old life.” She frowned a little at how harsh Akdarin’s answer had been when she asked him why she would want to do that.

 _”So when my brother wakes up and sees what an idiot he’s being, we can return you to your home.”_ Despite how close they had grown over the years she spent with their family, the harsh words, long faded from her mind had been on repeat in her head since Jalthar had left her. He had said over and over again how sorry he was for ever having said the words to her, and she’d forgiven him, but it still hurt her how right he had been without even knowing it.

She shook her head and brought herself back to the room. “Sorry about that. Where was I? RIght. Akdarin helped preserve my DNA before I lost it, so when everything happened with Jalthar, he got me what I needed to get home and start over.”

“So, you can only look like yourself for two hours at a time? And if you don't go back to your andalite form, anything after that is you back to your original born as self?”

Sephone looked to the archer, and for a moment wished for the eye stalks of her andalite form to be able to look at more than one specific person at a time. While she wanted to look at him to show he had her attention, she also wanted to be able to read the others in the room as well. “That’s correct, Agent Barton.”

“Why not just stay human? You said you’re no longer with your ex, why not try to go back to normal since you’re not tied to the other planet anymore?”

Despite all eyes now being on her, it was Bruce that was staring the hardest at her – even though the question had been posed by Clint. He knew that if he had the chance to be plain ole Bruce Banner again - a way to be rid of The Hulk - he would take it. It would be nice to be able to get angry without worrying about destroying a whole city. He could stress over deadlines (and research) without stressing about how much he was stressing for fear the big guy would come out and wreck his progress. He glanced at Natasha as a small voice in his mind mocked him for his unrequited love; it also reminded him that, even if Natasha were to return his affections, The Hulk prevented anything from blossoming between them.

“To be honest, Agent Barton, part of it is fear.” Sephone answered as she met Clint's gaze. “I can protect myself from almost anything that comes my way right now - can only do so much as a human – but it’s also an aversion to change. Yes, I willingly got stuck in an andalite form so I could be with Jalthar on Homeworld and leave Earth behind, but the change was not an easy one to decide on.

“I’ve always had trouble with change – the bigger and more abrupt the change, the more problems I have with it – and even when I have ample warning that change is coming I still have anxiety over it. It’s even worse if I actually have to make a decision that affects the outcome of the impending change.”

Two minds worked as one, but it was Natasha that beat Clint to asking the question they had both thought to ask. “How did you handle coming back to Earth then?”

“Barely… It was hard. I had so much to go over in my head it was nuts. Here, I’ll show you.”

Digging into her memories for the best possible example, Sephone thought back to when Jalthar had come out to her about his pregnant lover, and frowned at the stab of betrayal that she took care not to project to the others. She then revisited the memories of her thoughts from that moment and was flooded with her past anxiety.

_What would she do?_

_Where would she go? She couldn’t stay on Homeworld now, she had to leave._

__Wait… _What if she just moved to a different part of the planet?_ No. Even if I got settled somewhere else on Homeworld I’d have to hide who I really am. And it’s not like anyone would want me when they find out I wasn’t able to reproduce for my mate. Hell, even if I were to find another mate who wouldn’t care about my infertility, I could still never be honest about my history. __

_She would have to go back to Earth._

Dread flooded the projected feelings at the thought of returning to Earth, and the image of a woman’s face flashed in their minds as Sephone briefly thought about the woman who had caused her to run away. Though the image barely flickered in and out, the glimpse of the woman was followed by a sick feeling pooling in their stomachs as ice water trickled down their spines.

Oh god, _she had thought to herself,_ I can’t go back there! _But a mental whine from her memories filled the communication when the version of her in the memories realized she had no other option. She could go to another planet, but the only planets she fully knew all the customs for were Homeworld and Earth. Earth was really her only option._

Sephone stopped the memory before it could get to what else she had thought of at that time, and looked at the others. “See what even debating coming back to Earth instead staying on Homeworld caused?”

A heavy silence filled the room as the group sifted through everything they had been shown so far, each glancing at one another and sharing a silent communication with one another.

Watching the group, Sephone was reminded of being back on Homeworld, when she would see family units silently converse while grazing on the sweet grasses of the planet. She knew the group of heroes didn’t have the ability to communicate in such a way; it was just very easy to pretend with how well they all seemed to read one another. The silence that made time feel as though it were dragging was abruptly ended when Clint spoke, bringing to light just how quick the silent conversation actually had been.

“Who was she?” He asked. “The woman with the glasses.”

“My mother.” Sephone answered, her voice barely above a whisper. “She was a big reason of why I left Earth.” She picked up her forgotten drink and proceeded to drink half the glass, cringing at the burn of the whiskey. When she spoke her voice was subdued, but it was at least at normal volume as she pulled herself from the head space her mind was trying to slip into. “There were other reasons of course, but she was easily the biggest reason.”

“Best Parent of the Year?”

When Sephone caught the satirical intonation Clint had spoken the question with, she nodded to confirm his suspicion. “She doesn’t deserve to know I’m alive and well. And, as much as I miss my grandmother, if I were to see just her, she would tell my mom the minute she saw her. I don’t want or need the migraine that would cause.”

“What does she think happened to you?”

“As far as my gram is concerned, she thinks I just simply ran away. Technically that is the truth, it’s just not the whole truth. My mother though, she knew why I ran away.”

“Sorry to cut in Sci-Fi.” Tony interrupted as he stretched a leg out for comfort. “But, when I was doing a little digging, all testimonies from your mother and grandmother said that you would never run away. They thought you were kidnapped but no evidence was ever found to say what happened. Is that really the best way to let it sit?”

“Yes.”

The finality of her tone and the cold look in her eyes showed she was not diffident with her answer. Tony was about to open his mouth to try to solve the puzzle, but Sephone beat him to it.

“Stark.” She slowly shook her head. “Don’t defend them. My grandmother to a degree, but don’t defend Irene, you have no idea what you defend. Tell me Stark, how much attention did my disappearance get her? Hmm? How many news outlets wanted to help this poor, poor mother find her missing child?” The more Sephone questioned, the more bitter and venomous her tone became. “I’m sure she had no problem soaking up all the attention as she shed her crocodile tears. Damn bitch practically invented them.”

Her lips pulled back into a slight sneer, and her eyes grew even more cold as she continued, surprising not only Tony, but everyone else in the room. “She knew I ran away, and she knew damn well why.” She spat out. “Even if she’ll never admit it. She’d lose too much face if she admitted that she was anything but a good parent. Look up what being raised by a parent with Narcissistic Personality Disorder does to a child. While you’re at it, read into how the parent’s mind works out what they’ve done.” By the time she was done, she was practically vibrating with the negativity that rolled within her. She had been through several emotions since she began meeting the group, but they hadn’t seen this venomous side of her yet.

Thor, who had remained quiet as he took everything in, gave a soft scoff of a chuckle - born from bittersweet emotions - drawing all attention to him. Upon feeling the eyes of everyone on him, he looked at his friends before his gaze settled on Sephone as she tried to calm her emotions. The two stared at each other for a heavy moment before Thor unscrewed his flask and took a long pull, licking his lips as he looked to his friends.

“My friends, I apologize deeply for what I must speak of in your presence…” He looked to Sephone, who had calmed more as she tried to figure out why he had apologized to the other Avengers. “You remind me of Loki.”

Sephone blinked in confusion, her emotions momentarily forgotten by the God’s explanation for his nearly mirthless chuckle. “Loki? How…How do I remind you of Loki?”

“You have so much anger towards your mother, it mirrors the anger he held towards our father.” He met her stare with sad eyes and a sad smile. “I know where his anger came from, it was entirely justified once the truth of my brother’s origin became known, but he was bitter about it until the end… He…” Thor cleared his throat as he pushed down his own emotions. “He died recently, helping me save Jane while also preventing the convergence from happening. Sadly, this is not the first time I have mourned him, though it is with a heavy heart I say it shall be the last.”

“Not the first time?” Sephone questioned. “Was he missing?”

“In a way, yes. He fell from the Bifrost and into the cosmos. He should have perished, floating freely into the cosmos as he did, but somehow he survived.” Taking a deep pull from his flask, the God of Thunder continued. “Even up to his death he kept the secret of how he survived from us, even managing to cloak himself from the all-seeing gazes of both Heimdall and my father during his absence. We only found out he was alive when he made his attempt to invade Midgard. We mourned my brother for nearly a year before we had him back, only to lose him again barely another year later…” He frowned deeply, wishing for a moment he had Jane to lean on during his turmoil.

“You think I should contact Irene and Francine…”

Thor nodded as they stared at one another. “If they love you, they’ll forgive you for staying away so long.”

Sephone’s eyes, that had started to show warmth as she listened to Thor talk about Loki, grew dark and cold very quickly. Without knowing what she was doing, she reinforced Thor’s view of herself. The words that followed the sudden darkness served that purpose, too.

“I don’t need their forgiveness; they need mine and they’re not going to get it.” Her tone carried not only venom, but pain as well. “As I said to Stark…you don’t know what you defend, so don’t take their side.” She finished her glass in one go and set the empty tumbler down on the table. “I apologize for reacting like a cornered, wounded animal, but my parents never should’ve had me and I’m the one suffering for it. Plus, the longer we stay on this topic the more unbalanced my emotions are going to become, could we please get back on track so I can calm down?”

Unlike his brother, who would let his (sometimes) justified rage build into a frenzy, Sephone had differed by acknowledging she was losing the battle against her emotions and had requested a way to prevent it. In honor of her wishes Thor dipped his head briefly for a single nod as he held his hands up in neutral surrender. “Of course, Lady Sephone.” His lips pulled into a kind, soothing smile, the same he had used on Loki in the past. “Your apology is accepted, and most appreciated. I extend my own apology for having spoken of a matter I do not have enough knowledge of, and beg that you forgive me for offsetting your emotions with my uninformed attempts at reasoning with an estranged member of a family. After my own experiences, it hurts me to see a family torn apart.”

“No apology necessary Thor. My family is a really…touchy…subject for me. Whether it be the pang of loss for my grandfather, or my aversion to speaking about my mother and grandmother, it’s a difficult subject to broach.”

“We all have family issues, my Lady,” he smiled more as he saw the tension slowly leaving her body, “it’s merely a matter of how we deal with it.”

“You are not wrong there sir.” She chuckled as she tried to return his smile. “Now, where were we?”

“Proof that you won’t control us.” Clint answered calmly, not at all bothered by the deviation from their conversation's path. In fact, he was surprisingly appreciative of it. After what she had shown them – more so _how_ she had shown them – he had found himself nervous of what she might show them next.

As much as he wanted to get out of there and get back to his family, he had to make sure there wasn’t yet another new threat to keep Laura and the kids safe from. 

“Right, sorry.” Her small smile was shy as she bowed her head in apology. “In case it wasn’t obvious, I tend to get off track easily. Thank you, Agent Barton, for your patience and understanding.”

Sephone took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, ready for one last bad memory for the day. Only one problem. Now that it was time to give what she hoped would be good enough proof of her good intentions, she had no idea how to present it.

She could easily show him the memory that was hovering just below the surface, waiting to be addressed. But if her suspicions were correct, that Clint had been subjected to mind control by Loki, would he be able to handle the projected memory? She certainly didn't want to bring his own unpleasant past to the surface as she had earlier in the day with Tony.

Maybe it would be better to just talk about the memory and describe what she had been through? Or, tell him about what happened and project to him what she had dealt with? She had no way of knowing what would be the best option, and she wanted him to understand that he could trust her. If he chose to anyway.

“Alright, um, going back to yeerks, th-…oh, thank you.” She took the randomly offered bag of blueberries from Tony and, after taking a small handful, handed the package back and focused on Clint. “The people who had a yeerk in control were simply called Controllers. The thing with a Controller is that you can’t outwardly tell the person you’re talking to has an alien slug attached to their brain. That slug can access every memory, expression, habit. Everything that defines you is now under their control. Thing is though, you’re aware of everything. You’re stuck in your own head, watching through your own eyes, and hearing the words coming out of your mouth, but you’re powerless to stop it.”

“Is there a way to break through to the person within?” Natasha asked as her mind wandered to Loki's scepter, and the knock to the noggin that had freed Clint. “Or help the other person overcome the yeerk?”

“Yes, and no.” Sephone answered as she worked her way through her handful of the freeze-dried blueberries. “If a person is really, I mean _really_ determined, and the yeerk hasn’t gotten to feed recently enough? Yes, they can overpower the yeerk but there’s no telling for how long. Otherwise the host is trapped. Anything you do to the body is felt solely by the person, not the yeerk, and there are only two ways to get a yeerk to leave the body it’s in. You can either starve it to the point of leaving as a last ditch effort to survive, or the unlikely route of somehow convincing it to leave.”

“How do you starve it?”

“Remember those Kadrona rays I mentioned earlier?” She ate a blueberry as Natasha nodded and leaned against Clint, watching her with a curious stare that mirrored the expression of the archer beside her. “They need to soak them up every 72 hours or they die. Doesn’t even matter if their host is fully fed and hydrated. So if you think someone has a yeerk in their head, tie them up somewhere secure for 72 hours and see what happens.”

“You said they have access to memories, so a safe word wouldn’t even work?”

Sephone nodded as she looked at Bruce. “That’s right Dr. Banner. Any secret, any knowledge you have wouldn’t be just yours anymore, and they can even alter memories while they’re in control.” She met gazes with each Avenger with her next words, wishing again for her eyestalks. “But as I said, these are things that don’t need to be worried about anymore.” Her eyes landed on Clint and didn’t move away. “Personally speaking, I’m glad I’ll never have to experience that again.”

“Experience… _that_ again? You were infested?”

“Yeah. Revisiting those Kadrona rays… Because it’s a hassle to move around from place to place the yeerks pretty much used the same meeting places, no matter how many times they were attacked at those locations. Made it easy for recon missions, just look like someone different each time. It took quite a bit of coaxing, after my first time in one of these meeting places, but I was brought along on one of these missions.

“At the time I didn’t have the ability to morph yet, so we just had to hope that I wasn’t recognized from other missions I had helped on. As usual, once we got what info we needed, we tried to save anyone we could while doing what damage we could without getting caught. Since the others had the ability to morph and hide in plain sight, I was tasked with sabotage. For my part of the mission, Jalthar and Ax – he was an andalite that had teamed up with the Animorphs - had both worked together to show me how to damage the ray machine for my part in the mission, and get me mentally ready for going into a meeting place. The plan was for me to wait for the signal and damage the machine and quickly vacate that area so I wouldn’t be caught.”

Clint raised his hand for a sec, just high enough to get her attention, and when she gave him a look to go ahead, he asked her. “Wouldn’t the yeerks wonder about you just walking around their machine?”

“We took that into account. Part of my mission included blending in with the willing hosts, so when I was led to the-“

“Back up, did you just say _willing_ hosts?” Clint cut it, his face screwed up in a mix of disbelief and disgust.

“I did…” She drudged up the memories from her first visit to the yeerks pools, focusing only on the TV and rec room she could see from where she had been standing with Tommy, and projected to the Avengers the memory of the people laughing and having fun, while others screamed and cried in cages nearby. “While their yeerks were feeding on the Kadrona rays, the willing hosts can go enjoy themselves. Yeerks prefer a symbiotic relationship to a forced one, but there is no hesitation when it comes to taking what they want.”

“What could they possibly offer people to make them agree to that?”

“To the high school students and college goers, they offered their intelligence to help them get through with the grades they wanted, or helped them get the girls or guys they wanted. To people who needed to work to make a living they let their host take the backseat while the yeerk did the work for them. Alternatively, they could back systems and give them as much money as they wanted without raising red flags in the system. Short version? A free ride on life, and all they have to do is let an alien slug run the show.”

“What if a male slug ends up inside a woman? He’s going to be okay using the body to sleep with whatever boyfriend or husband she might have?” It was Natasha that voiced a question this time.

“Yeerks don’t have genders, so it wouldn’t matter to them.” Sephone elaborated as she looked at the redhead. “A yeerk is only called a gender based on their human's gender. Not to mention human sex would be a whole new experience for that yeerk, and all of them love new experiences. Remember, they were used to being confined to pools.

“So, getting back on track, to pose as a willing host and blend in with everything going on, Ax – that’s the short version – was going to morph into a yeerk and infest me. Minus the controlling part of course. We were going to go in, I’d get in line with the willing controllers and drop Ax off in the pool. Since I’d look like a willing participant I would have mostly free reign over the place, just enough to get the job done, but that was all I was supposed to need.

“All I had to do from that point, was make my way towards the machine that powered the Kadrona ray, activate a small EMP that was designed specifically for this machine and nothing else.”

“Less noticeable if only one machine goes down,” Tony added in on a hunch. “Am I right? Of course I’m right. Go on.”

Sephone gave an amused grin and shook her head. “So, after knocking out one machine I was supposed to move on and take down the other before making my way back into the line for a “new yeerk”, which would’ve just been Ax still in yeerk form. He was going to get put back in my head so we could leave and meet up with the others to go over everything learned on the mission. Jalthar was going to keep in contact with him through thought-speak to let him know when to swim to the hand of the person who was taking yeerks from the pool.”

“So what went wrong?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger, but I promise to make it up in the next chapter! And as always, comments are appreciated 😊


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad I got this out as quick as I did 😅 But this is another one you guys can thank Ashley for. Seriously chapters 6-8 could not have happened if that girl had not put a bug in my ear. Ha, no pun intended XD. Anyway, I got past the hardest part so hopefully I can finally work on the chapters that have been bouncing around in my brain.
> 
> Trigger warning/tags that were updated:
> 
> Graphic description of injury  
> Flashbacks  
> Mind Manipulation  
> Mentions of terminal illness  
> Alzheimer's Disease  
> Angst  
> Memory Sharing

_“Run it by me again.”_

_When Valen lifted her head and looked into the crystal blue eyes of Jalthar’s teenage human morph, the tender worry he was regarding her with made her feel a little bit lighter regarding the situation; it was nice to know someone cared so much for her besides her grandfather. He had returned her to her home after a meeting with the rest of the group and, when she had requested that he stay, jumped at the chance to spend more time with her. Now, they were laying together in her bed, with his arms wrapped around her and her head resting on his chest. Her head had been in that same spot since they had laid down together, allowing her to hear the steady, singular heartbeat in his chest – so different from when she laid her head on his andalite chest and heard three hearts, each beating their own unique rhythms – until she had lifted it to look at him._

_She knew what “it” he was referring to. “It” was the plan for the next intel run, only this time their distraction was going to be making the Kadrona ray machines stop working._

_The yeerks had been getting wise to their morphs, as well as the tactics the group had used during different runs, so they needed to come up with a new method to try. Marco had even almost been captured during the last mission, hammering home just how close the group was getting to more problems. Usually, having lost Tommy at the yeerk pool almost a year ago, Valen avoided missions that involved going to the pools. However, this time, she was going in._

_Seeing as she didn’t have any morphing capabilities, Valen would have to go in looking like herself, something Jalthar was not too happy about. If she were to be honest with herself, Valen wasn’t too happy about it either. She wanted to beg someone else to go in her place, but her friends needed her so, she would do her best to tap into the bravery her grandfather had tried to instill in her and do her part._

_She was still having trouble, though, because going into the meeting area was one thing. The more troublesome and stressful part to Valen was that, if she were caught, covers would be blown. Whole operations that have gone down, as well as ones that were being discussed, would be exposed._ Families _would be exposed._

_“Ax is going to morph into a yeerk, and I’m going to let him ride in my head into the meeting place. Once inside we’re going to get in line for me to leave him in the pool, and when he gets out of my head, I’m going to act like one of the willing humans and just go to walk around._

_While I’m walking around, I’m going to get close enough to use the kill switch device you and Akdarin made for the Kadrona ray machines. All I have to do is get within...” She paused, worrying her lip between her teeth as she worked through the details in her mind. “Ten, no, fifteen feet of the machines, right?”_

_Jalthar nodded his confirmation as his hand slowly stroked her shoulder length hair. “Fifteen feet or closer,” he clarified, “but we want you to be as inconspicuous as possible. And, while you’re on your mission, I’ll be disguised as one of the Hork-Bajir-Controllers keeping an eye on things.”_

_“Right. So, I just have to get within fifteen feet-”_

“I’m so sorry to cut in.” Steve apologized as he interrupted the girl. He gave his friends an apology as well, since his interruption unintentionally jarred the others a little when it caused the images they were being shown to abruptly stop. “What’s a…Hork-Bajir…?”

“Please ignore the appearance?” Sephone requested. “Despite their appearance, they’re a very gentle, peaceful race.” As Sephone answered Steve’s query verbally, she broadcast an image of a Hork-Bajir with a human next to it for reference. She watched as eyes went wide around the room at the image they were seeing. “As I said, ignore the appearance.”

“That’s a tall order,” Bruce mumbled softly as he studied the creature in her broadcast.

Sephone gave an amused chuckle, remembering how she had responded when finding out how the aliens truly were. “I can’t stress enough how harmless they are. Those blades are for climbing the trees of their planet, and because they’re vegetarians, the blades cut off the bark so they can eat it. They don’t even like conflict, so the only time those blades are used on another _anything_ , is entirely self-defense. I’m sure, with those blades, you can see why they were enslaved by the yeerks.

“For them, the yeerks were the only reason they came to know what fighting even was. They have the same intelligence level as a small human child, but their bodies were _perfect_ to be shock troops for the yeerk army. Not to mention how incredible their senses of hearing and smell are. Vision’s alright during the day, not that great at night though, but it didn’t matter because the yeerks would still just run the hosts into the fray anyway. The Hork-Bajir heal quickly, even broken bones, and can handle a ridiculous amount of pain, at least compared to a human.”

“I’m fine just never meeting one,” Tony mumbled distractedly into his glass as numerous thoughts went through his mind. One of them was whether or not adding a blade design to the arms of an Iron Man suit would look cool, or just tacky. _Probably tacky._ He thought to himself and scrapped that image from his mind, as well as the thought of creating a new suit. He had destroyed them as a promise to Pepper. She’d never forgive him if he made another suit.

“Ready to go on?” Sephone hadn’t meant for her tone to sound as harsh as it had, but she was already nervous enough about going through this memory with them and now that she was here she just wanted to get it done and over with.

When everyone heard the slight desperation in her tone, and had given their own form of telling her to go on, Sephone resumed the broadcasted memory.

_“Right. So, I just have to get within fifteen feet of the machines and the kill switch device will shut them down, killing the feed to the pools. Once the Controllers realize the machines aren’t feeding the pools anymore, they’ll want to get as many hands on them as they can to get them back up and running. They’ll need some of the willing people to be controlled while their yeerks figure out what happened to the machines, so I’ll go over to the pool when they call for the volunteers, and you’ll let Ax know when I’m at the platform so he can swim into the hand of the person overseeing the infestations and get put back in my head.”_

_“And once he’s in your head?”_

_“I act like I’m going over to help. That’s when you, Akdarin, and Cassie will change out of your Hork-Bajir morphs and start kicking ass. When everyone scatters for safety, I’m going to follow those running away to find out if there are tunnels that we don’t know about yet and, as soon as humanly possible, I need to get Ax out of my head because he’ll be nearing his two hours by then.”_

_“And?”_

_Valen furrowed her brows in confusion as she racked her mind to try to think of what she might have forgotten. Her memory search was put on hold when a gentle hand cupped her chin and guided her head to tilt upwards, blue orbs locking gazes with her green ones as a small smile lifted the corner of Jalthar’s mouth._

_“And, come back safely.” He spoke softly, his gentle plea evident in his tone as his thumb brushed over her chin. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened…I’d be lost without you.”_

_Valen felt as if her heart would swell right out of her teenage chest at the affection his words were filled with. She had crushes in the past – what teenage girl didn’t have multiple crushes throughout their teenage years? - but none had panned out or turned into anything. No one had ever held her heart like this before._

_Her past crushes had disappeared from her mind once she and the War Prince had begun growing closer, much to his brother’s obvious dissatisfaction._

_She never thought she stood a chance with the alien and, considering the things she had been through before she ever met him, she wasn’t sure she would want a chance. If she gave him a chance, then at some point their relationship would call for intimacy; that was where she hit the wall that kept her from going for him. As if he would want a human anyway. With her past it would be a long time, if ever, before she allowed anyone to touch her. Oddly enough, she had managed to tell him about that dark part of her past, and (thankfully) he had been understanding about her need to go slow._

_“I’ll come back.” She reassured him as she gently moved his hand away from her chin so she could reach up and brush his cheek with her palm, an andalite’s kiss in a human form. She was rewarded with him turning his head and kissing her palm while looking at her with a placated smile._

_“When I return you home that night, could I stay a while? Ease my mind that you’re alright?”_

_Valen’s stomach flipped with her joy as her lips pulled into a smile and she snuggled back into his chest, wrapping her arm back around his middle. “Of course. Anything to spend some time with you.”_

_\- - - - -_

__**Wrong.** __

_The mission hadn’t even lasted five minutes before one of the actual Hork-Bajir-Controllers had figured out Jalthar was an imposter. By that point, Ax had already been dropped in the pool, and Valen was almost to the ray machine when she heard the barely controlled panic in the order that was issued in her head. > **Run.** <_

_She froze in place when she heard the panicked screams, as the giant Taxxon that had once been Ax, emerged from the Yeerk pool. The sight of a Taxxon sent many of the willing hosts, as well as some of the different Controllers, scattering to get away from the loud, carnivorous creature._ Escape! _She had to escape!_

_Valen snapped out of her stupor and looked for the exit. Since she had started the mission as a “willing” Host, she sought out the group of people who were supposedly like her and quickly caught up to them, taking up a spot at the back of the group. As she realized they were headed towards the escape tunnel she would now have to map without Ax in her head, she steeled her reserve and kept pace with the others as they all disappeared into the tunnel._

_She ran along with them, the sounds of hurried footsteps thundering down the dirt lined tunnel that was lined with the kind of lights she expected to see in a mine. When the tunnel dipped down and began to curve, a flash of panic shot through Valen, but it left her as the tunnel began to level back out and slowly angle back up towards where she knew the surface was. Thankfully the tunnel opened up to the woods, and even though she still followed the group she had used to get out of the facility, she had intentionally started lagging behind so she could attempt to lose them without being obvious._

_When she finally felt safe enough that the group was far enough ahead, she dropped back completely and took a moment to get her bearings with where she was. She had never truly appreciated Harold’s teachings of following the stars, until the moment she found herself using those lessons to find her way to the designated meeting spot. She headed back the way she came, but had veered on the path back little by little so she could come out of the woods away from the mall, when she heard noisy steps in the distance that were coming closer to her. Her heart leapt into her throat at first, but she soon breathed out a sigh of relief when a large, black horse galloped over and came to a stop in front of her._

_> You look lost.< Cassie’s teasing voice in her mind was a great relief to Valen, who gave her friend a grateful smile._

_“You have no idea how happy I am to see you.” Valen climbed onto the horse’s back and held on as the teenagers began their trip to rendezvous with the others. “Did everyone make it out okay?”_

_> Everyone made it out with little to no injuries,< Cassie answered as her hooves thundered across the ground of the woods, >but of course Jalthar was more worried about you than anything else. When I left, he and Akdarin were stomping hooves at each other,< Valen could almost see the eye roll intoned in Cassie’s thoughts, >and more than likely having a Thought-Speak argument. Jalthar wanted to be the one to find you, but Akdarin wouldn’t let him come look for you. Said it was too dangerous.<_

_“I’m just glad I did get away. I was scared for a minute when everything went nuts.”_

_As they arrived at the meeting spot further in the woods, Valen barely had her feet on the ground before Jalthar, using his teenager morph, ran over and wrapped his arms around her for a tight embrace._

_Valen happily returned the embrace, inhaling his scent and closing her eyes as it fully hit her that if things had gone wrong, she wouldn’t be in his arms right now. She felt the slight tremors in his body as he held her, and figured he must have come to the same conclusion. “I’m here,” she spoke softly by his ear as she lightly nuzzled her cheek against his, “I’m okay, Jal.”_

_As he drew back, Jalthar's hand came to rest on her cheek as he looked into her eyes, the corners of his mouth pulling downwards. “I was worried about you. You weren’t at the meeting place.”_

_“I followed some of the volunteers out through a really long tunnel,” Valen explained as she cupped her hand over his and leaned into the touch, “once we got out to the woods I fell behind until they were gone. I was headed to you guys when Cassie found me.” She looked at the girl who had come to her rescue, who was standing in her natural form with the others. “Thank you, Cassie, for finding me and giving me a lift back.”_

_“Of course Val,” Cassie responded with a smile, “it was no problem.”_

_> Let’s return to Cassie’s farm.< Akdarin cut in with his Thought-Speak on broadcast. >We need to discuss what happened tonight.<_

_Valen flinched at the cold tone of the voice in her head, Akdarin's displeasure not even remotely masked in his broadcasted words. She didn’t even need to look in his direction to know he was glaring at her with at least one of his eye stalks. She had known the elder of the two brothers would be angered with her for some reason or another, even if the mission had gone fully to plan, and she was pretty sure that no matter what she did to win him over, the elder andalite would always find some reason to be mad at her._

_At that moment she felt like her usual doubts were right._ Maybe they would be better without me around to mess things up… _Jalthar would be better without some human stressing him out and dragging him down. He deserved to be with someone he wouldn’t have to consider changing for, someone who could give him what he needed without shying away from intimacy. He’d be upset at first, but he’d understand._

_So that’s what she did._

_Over the next few weeks, she withdrew from Jalthar and the others; she even went as far as faking sick a few days during the week to deal with them less and less. The fact that no one tried to call or check on her during that time left an ache in her chest, but she knew it was for the best. If they had tried to reach out to her, she would have had an even harder time letting go of the first group of friends she’d had in her life. She wasn’t used to being surrounded by so much love and care, and it had been nice while it lasted, but it was better this way. It was best not to get used to things she couldn’t have (shouldn’t have if her mother was to be believed) or people she couldn’t always know. Some part of her wanted to know how they could let her go so easily, but the doubt and horrible things her mother had carved into her own daughter’s brain kept Valen from thinking too hard on it. It would just hurt her more in the end to hear that even her friends couldn’t care for her, that even Jalthar couldn’t truly love her, so it was best just left alone._

_At least now she was no longer burdened with trying to protect the Earth. She could focus on more important things, like helping her grandmother and mother with the care of her grandfather. Alzheimer’s was the soul crushing verdict. There was no coming back from that, and it was hard to deal with now that she was on her own. She had found out a week after she distanced herself from the Animorphs, and it had almost driven her back to Jalthar’s arms in desperate need of the comfort his arms always gave her._

_But...she had been the one to walk away._

_She had no right to just go running back in hopes of any of them taking her back into the fold. As lonely as she had been before she met and befriended Tommy, she felt infinitely lonelier now that she was missing eight people instead of just one. Soon she would be losing one more. If the doctors were right, then they only had her grandfather for six more months, seven if they were lucky. She had already done the research and knew they_ could _get more than six months, possibly even a little over two years if they were lucky, so she allowed herself to have hope that they get even one more year with the man that had been her father figure._

_It still weighed on her mind that his had come on so quick that even her mother, never one to go more than five minutes without opening her mouth to say something, had been silenced with the shock of the news. He had only started showing signs a few months ago and already he was forgetting something as simple as how to use a spoon. It wasn’t looking good, Valen knew deep down not to let herself hope, but this was her grandfather; she couldn’t give up on him, not when he had never given up on her._

_It was around the third week of being away from her old friends that Valen had a strange dream that unexpectedly led her to answers for some of her questions, but also gave her answers she didn’t even know she needed.  
_  
She was sitting in the passenger seat of a race car – it was the #11 car from her NES NASCAR game. While she was the passenger, a cartoon Mario drove the car along the winding track. He was speeding past the two other race cars on the track with them, and each one had someone in the passenger seat. But, unlike Valen, those passengers weren’t sitting in the car. The passengers of the other cars were sitting out the window on the ledge of the door, firing lasers from gray and orange guns at the giant ducks that were flying through the sky.

“You gonna shoot, or what?” The cartoon game character snapped as he tried to stay ahead of the other two cars.

It was all Valen needed to hear from Mario to make her move into the same position as the other passengers, sitting carelessly on the door ledge of a car that was racing down a road, firing at the ducks and watching them disappear in a cloud of pixels when she hit her target. Not too long after she and Mario joined what was easily the best version of Duck Hunt she had ever played, a dark shadow fell over them as a duck that was way larger than a skyscraper flew above them. Her eyes went wide as her mouth fell open in shock before she uttered softly, “No way I can kill him.”

Suddenly the car was stopped, and somehow she was now standing in front of the giant mallard, the headlights casting her shadow on the large cartoon duck. She was completely exposed, the irony of being a sitting duck not escaping her as she realized she only had the laser gun to help her defeat this ridiculously large duck. What had happened to the other two cars? They could be helping! She lifted her arm, aiming for the breast area of the monstrous fowl, and fired the laser gun.

Was that a recoil?  
 _  
What is that screaming?_ Valen wondered to herself as she blinked in confusion. __

_As her eyes opened from another confused blink, Valen was hit by a sense of whiplash as the scene changed around her once more. This time, however, instead of standing by the #11 NES car as she had been, she was standing in the middle of a dark road, by a car she didn’t recognize. The headlights beside her illuminated a horrific sight that would permanently be scarred into her mind._

_Jalthar’s human form had a seared wound in its side, with edges that still glowed from the heat of the Dracon beam that had wounded him. The beam that had come from the weapon in her hand. She felt like she was in a nightmare as she watched Jalthar writhe in agony on the ground, his screams growing in pitch with his agony as the searing wound began spreading over his injured side. She was vaguely aware of movement around her, of Akdarin rushing his brother’s side, tail arching up behind him and ready to strike, but all she could focus on was Jalthar and the injury she had caused with the weapon she had yet to drop._

_“Oh god...” She had barely whispered the shocked, disbelieving words when darkness swallowed her as the flat of Ax’s tail blade struck the side of her head._

This time it was Bruce that jarred them all out of the memories when he nearly jumped out of his skin while shouting, “What the hell did that gun just do!?”

“That is a Dracon beam.” Sephone answered somberly as her eyes moved from one face to the next, gauging everyone’s reactions to what they had all just been shown. Each and every one of them had varying levels of shock or horror written on their faces as they looked to her for answers.

“What the actual fuck is a Dracon beam?” Tony questioned behind his newly refilled tumbler of whiskey.

“To borrow from an earlier reference, think Stark Trek phaser set to Kill. It’s the bastardized version of another piece of andalite technology called a shredder. It’s more similar to the phasers than the Dracon beams, in the sense that they have multiple settings, ranging from different levels of stun, to powerful enough to cut through ten feet of solid alloy. Unlike the shredder, which kills quick and instant when used right, the Dracon beam was made with the goal of causing as much pain and suffering to the creature that is shot.

“The yeerks who changed the tech on the shredder, when they turned it into the Dracon beam, lowered the intensity of the beam but designed it to spread slowly until it entirely disintegrates the target. Pretty much, from the moment you’re hit until the moment you die, you get to know what it’s like to feel your cells being torn apart.”

"I’ve seen similar weapons before,” mumbled Thor as he thought about the carnage that he had been witness to in his many battles. “It’s a horrible thing to watch someone go through.”

“Hold up.” Clint sat forward at the edge of his seat. “If he got hit by one of those beams, how is he still alive?”

“He got hit in his human form,” Sephone explained, “not his natural, andalite form. When we acquire DNA for a morph, the building blocks of each being doesn’t contain injury coding, so if something happens to us while we’re in a morph all we have to do is change back to our natural form and we’re no longer injured.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony blurted out, “run that by me again? I think I had some weird, crazy, mixed signal going on.”

“When in morph, the temporary body is based solely on the DNA we acquired to have that morph. If something were to happen to me in this body, I’d just need to get somewhere safe long enough to return to my andalite form and I’m good.”

“What if you’re in your andalite form and you get injured?” Clint joined in. “Do you just morph into something else and then morph back just fine?”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. What our base form has before we morph, it’ll have when we morph back to our base form. For example, say the arm of my base form was cut off months ago and all I have is a stump there. If I morph into a dog, the DNA says the dog is supposed to have two front legs and two back legs so that’s what I’ll have. But, when I put the borrowed DNA back in my reserve and return to my base form, I go back to having one arm. If I had a cut in my hand before I morphed to something else, DNA doesn't have coding for cuts so the hand of my morph wouldn’t have a cut, but when I go back to my natural form I would still have a cut because that’s what my body knew last.

“Jalthar was lucky that Akdarin is a scientist first, and a warrior second. Akdarin was able to use his tail blade to cut the effected chunk out of Jalthar’s human form in a way that didn’t kill him right away, but did give him the time he needed to be able to morph back before it was too late.”

“That dream, it was made by the yeerk, wasn’t it?”

Sephone looked at Steve, who was watching her with a sympathetic gaze, and regretfully nodded to confirm his suspicions. “Remember how I said the yeerks have full control when in a host, and can mess with memories? They can also mess with what the host knows as reality as a way to better control them. I was under control for three weeks, and no one knew anything was wrong for a while.

“In the memory I was showing you, how the tunnel dipped and then angled back up? It didn’t level out and then angle up like it did in my memory. There was a chamber of sorts dug out that we travelled down into. In all of our intel, our group never found out they had started using a code word with each meeting. So, when I went into that secret chamber and couldn’t give the code word, I was found out. They held me against my will until they could get a yeerk to infest me with. Once it was in control, it made me forget all about the chamber and made me believe I had been running the whole time.

“In the three weeks I was infested, I thought I was avoiding everyone. Nope. I was attending every meeting at Cassie’s farm and didn’t even know it. When the yeerk needed to feed, it would contact one of the other Controllers for a ride to the yeerk pools and just wipe my memory of when I was temporarily free of it.” Sephone frowned. “It was Akdarin that had realized something seemed off. During the meetings I didn’t know I was attending, the yeerk had started asking questions that I never would’ve asked. It wasn’t uncommon for a bunch of questions to be asked in general - we all wanted to make sure mission ran smoothly - but suddenly I was asking way more questions that I had before.

“To ease his mind, and protect the mission, Akdarin used an owl morph to watch my home for a few nights. He just wanted to either confirm his suspicions before going to Jalthar, or squash them and move on but, during one of the nights he was watching my house, he saw a car pull over near the house with its lights off. When he saw me sneak out of the house and get in the unknown car, he followed it from above and reached out to Jalthar to show him what he was seeing via Thought-Speak so Jalthar and the others could come together to save me from being infested. They knew it would be too dangerous to try to save me while I was surrounded by the enemy, so they waited for them to start driving back home, this way it would just be me and one other Controller, but they couldn’t let the car get to my home. They had to find a good place to get us to stop, and a way to make that happen.

“Because the way I would be driven home had only two lanes and semi deep ditches on each side, Marco and Cassie – two of the Animorphs – came up with the idea to pose as two bucks in the road who were fighting and had gotten their antlers locked. They staged their fight far enough ahead of the car I was in that the driver would see them early enough to stop in time, rather than having them panic and swerve into one of the ditches. And even if my driver did swerve, as long as he slowed while he swerved, it wouldn’t be a lethal accident. They just didn’t want to risk my life.”

“That explains being on a dark road in the middle of the night...”

Sephone nodded as she looked at Natasha. “Yeah... Ax was the one who knocked me out before I could see what Akdarin had to do to save Jalthar.”

“How did they get the yeerk out?”

Sephone gave an involuntary shudder as she remembered the details. “Before they woke me up, Ax had to go in and eat the other yeerk. If he didn’t do it, there was no telling what damage it would inflict on my head while it was in there. Just because my body was knocked out, didn’t mean the yeerk was. As far as they knew that thing was in there making me forget everything down to who I am. It could even be in there twisting and ruining memories. It had nothing to lose anymore, why not cause as much damage as possible before being eliminated?”

“Did it...” Clint spoke up this time, and he did his best to keep his voice even, despite the tightness in his chest. “Did it mess with your memories?”

Sephone shook her head while shrugging. “I have no idea to be honest. When the yeerk alters your memories, they don’t go back to what they were before the yeerk was there. They’re either permanently altered, or gone forever depending on what all the yeerk did. For me, it seems like it left things in tact outside of its time in my head, but I have no way of knowing something is different or gone.”

Clint found his heart going out to the girl. At least his memories were intact, he had no doubts, but she had to go the rest of her life not knowing what she was or wasn’t missing. He couldn’t imagine what that must be like for her, and he was secretly glad he didn’t know. Thankfully he hadn’t lost any memories when he was under control of Loki’s scepter. Once he was freed from the hold Loki had on him, he spent some time trying to recall every important memory he could, making sure all that mattered to him was still in his head. He wished he could forget the new memories he had gained during his time as the God’s puppet, but unfortunately it looked like those were there to stay.

Sephone looked at her watch when it beeped, and worried her lip between her teeth. It was her warning that she had half an hour left before she needed to change back to her andalite form, but she was so emotionally and physically drained that she didn’t think she could handle demorphing only to morph once more, and then demorph when she finally made it back home.

"I hate to say it, but I really should be getting out of here. I know you guys are busy, but would it be okay if we finish this up for the night? Today’s been pretty draining for me.”

Tony had been about to cut in, ready to ask if they could watch the change this time, but Bruce spoke up before he could open his mouth. He had no idea what Tony had been about to say, though he did have his suspicions, but he could see the exhaustion in the girl’s eyes, and how she had started to have trouble holding herself up straight. It was obvious to him that the day had worn her down, and he wasn’t going to let Tony hold her up.

“Of course, Sephone,” Bruce answered for the others. “Did you drive here, or do you need a ride?”

“I caught a cab because of my bag, but I don’t want to bother anyone for a ride,” she started answering as she stood up. “Oh, speaking of...” Sephone opened her messenger bag and took out a small case, the size of a CD case, but twice as thick. She held the case out to Bruce, who was already extending his hand to take what she had to offer. “Inside are communication devices that also work as translators. Akdarin made me one the night before I left to come back to Earth, in case I chose to go somewhere besides America.” She watched Bruce and Tony open the case as the other four Avengers tried to lean over to see what they looked like. “Since I was coming here to speak with you, I figured, with all of the missions in other countries, you guys might need it more than I would so I made up a few more in preparation of our meeting.”

“These are so small,” Bruce muttered in amazement as he looked at the tiny metallic looking rings, no bigger than the head of a standard sized screw, “how do they stay in? What kind of system do they hook up to?”

“What’s the delay on the translations?” Tony piped up as the other four, unable to see the small rings inside the case on their unofficial leader’s lap, left their seats to crowd around Tony and Bruce.

“The ring sits inside the ear canal, so light you don’t even notice it’s there. Just use a pair of tweezers to gently squeeze it so it shrinks down, and then when you rest it inside the ear canal it expands to adjust and sit firmly, but comfortably, in place. You can’t see them because of how small they are, but there are picometer wires in the ring that catch the sounds and feed them into the receiver, which then alters the audio to what the base language is set as and plays that altered audio for the user to hear.”

“And the delay?” Tony looked up at her.

“None.” Sephone answered as she met his questioning gaze, watching with slight satisfaction as the billionaire’s eyes widened with a mixture of being surprised and being impressed before they looked back down to examine the tech. “The translation is instant.” She looked at Bruce, who had donned his glasses as he peered down into the case. “To answer your question, Dr. Banner, the system is inside the ring. It’s also connected to the small discs that are under each receiver.”

“What _are_ those?” Clint questioned as he paid attention to the small piece of metal no bigger than the end of a brand-new eraser.

“Those are broadcast devices that allow you to respond in the same language you’re hearing, but not quite. It won’t alter the way your mouth moves, but it does alter the sound that comes out by attaching, without pain, to your larynx. The receiver registers the language you’re hearing and sends a signal to the broadcast device to tell it what language you need to respond in so, when you speak your native tongue, it can alter the words to come out as they need to, despite the way your mouth is moving for your language.”

“So, what’s the risk?”

Sephone shook her head as she closed her bag and adjusted it on her shoulder, noticing that Steve had looked her way. “There is no risk. If for some reason it ceases to function, you just replace it. And, if an EMP knocks it out, it’s only out for about point two seconds before it’s back up and running.”

Natasha looked at the girl, still mildly skeptical, though not as much as she had been when she first walked into the room. “You’re just giving these to us?”

“I am,” Sephone reassured the older woman. “I know I don’t have what it takes to be an Avenger or anything like that, but any way I can help, I want to. I know if my grandfather were still alive, he’d still be trying to make this world a better place any way he could. That makes it my turn.”

Steve took notice of the way her back straightened as she spoke about her grandfather, how even though she had looked tired and exhausted a moment ago, speaking of him seemed to breathe more life back into the girl. He moved out from behind the others, gaining her attention. “I know you said you didn’t want to bother any of us for a ride,” he spoke as their eyes met, “but I’d be honored if you let me give you a lift home, Ms. Martin.”

“Ca-..Steve,” she gave him an apologetic as she caught herself, “I’d be happy to accept a ride from you. Thank you.”

\- - - - -

Sephone gave a heavy, weary sigh as she walked into her apartment and set her now empty bag down, groaning as she toed off her shoes and locked the door. She had barely taken a few steps into her home before her body began to shift and morph, four legs replacing two as her andalite form took shape. But just as soon as she had finished her demorphing, one of her eye stalks caught a shape lounging on her couch and she whipped around, tail arching dangerously behind her as she eyed her intruder with her front facing eyes while her eye stalks swiveled around, searching for any other threats.

Sure, no one liked coming home to a stranger in their home, but this stranger had just witnessed her morphing to her andalite form.

>Who are you? What are you doing in my home?<

The light by her couch turned on, revealing to her a man that she hadn’t seen since she was about to leave with Jalthar and Akdarin to go to her new home. The man wore a focused, tight-lipped look on his face as he stared her down, surer of himself this time than the last time they saw each other.

“Now Valen, is that anyway to treat an old friend?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all liked the last couple of updates. As always comments are loved and appreciated! ^_^


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the audience of the story to Mature because of what's beginning in this chapter, and what will be coming soon. Also these tags were updated due to this chapter, but these are the new tags so you can also have a trigger warning:
> 
> Beginning Signs of PTSD  
> Negative Thoughts of Self  
> Harmful Views of Self  
> Angst (not updated tag, just a warning)  
> Restraints  
> Magic Dampening  
> Minor Break Down  
> Mention of Miscarriage  
> Deception  
> Confrontation  
> Mention of Infanticide  
> Physical Violence  
> Magic
> 
> Character tags have been updated as well:
> 
> Odin  
> Frigga  
> Frigga's Ladies-in-waiting  
> Einherjar  
> Hela (Mentioned only)
> 
> Relationship tags updated:
> 
> Thor/Jane Foster (I meant to put this on a few chapters back)  
> Frigga/Odin
> 
> If any of those things bother you, I'm sorry. This chapter discusses part of Loki's back story, and is me getting to play around a little with what happened when Loki took the cube and dipped out. I will say though, you'll notice this chapter is a little shorter than usual, but I promise the reason will be revealed in the next chapter.
> 
> All of that being said, I hope you enjoy!

** 2012 – Day of the Battle of New York, Stark Tower **

Loki couldn’t believe his luck when the Tesseract came skittering to a halt against his boot, drawing his attention downward. All of the chaos in the lobby of Stark Tower – the angry Hulk, the annoying man demanding that Loki be placed in his captivity, the tiny…man (what?) that he saw kick the briefcase – vanished as he stared at his chance to escape. The spell was broken quickly when the Hulk roared in anger at having been forced to take the stairs, reminding Loki that he had a chance to escape.

Seeing his window of opportunity closing very rapidly, Loki bent down and grasped the Tesseract in his hands. After a quick darting around of his eyes to ensure no one had their eyes on him, he used what magic wasn’t dampened by the shackles to tap into the power of the blue cube. As the cube strengthened his powers, he opened a portal to one of his many secret dark passages and quickly slipped through.

Once he was safely inside the passage, he slumped against a nearby rock wall and closed his eyes. He used the cube’s power on his magic to reach out to his surroundings, to ensure he was well and truly alone, and found solace in the silence and the absence of any other presences.

_Silence._

Oh, how he had missed the beautiful lack of sound.

Ever since his rescue – if one could call it that – from the void of space by Thanos’ crew, he couldn’t get a moment of silence. The noises of the ship he had been held prisoner on, his own noises during the sessions of seemingly endless torture, the mindless chatter of the crew and the Chitauri. It never ended.

After being tortured with pain he had never once known, as well as sleep deprivation, being constantly imprisoned in sweltering hot rooms, and never having a moment’s peace, Loki was ready to end his torment himself when The Other had shuffled his way into Loki’s cell, a golden scepter grasped in his hands. When The Other turned the scepter, and pressed it firmly against Loki’s chest to release the power within, the God of Lies was finally subdued. With it came the most beautiful peace and quiet Loki had known, why would he even think of fighting such a peaceful calm?

Under the spell of the Scepter, all that he could focus on was his mission. The noise no longer bothered him. It was so much easier to follow his leader’s orders now that he had submitted.

But Loki had a strong mind so once the torture stopped, and his mind had begun to heal from the damage done, he was able to slowly start breaking free from the mental cage Thanos and The Other had tried to lock him away in. He was the God of Mischief and Lies, he couldn’t be broken for long. It had taken the multiple lumps on his poor, throbbing head (courtesy of The Hulk) to break the cage and set the Liar God free from his prison, but…it also let the noise back in.

However, hidden away in one of his dark passages, Loki welcomed the silence surrounding him like one would welcome a long lost loved one.

Loved ones.

Frigga.

Loki opened his once again green eyes, no longer blue from the effects of the Scepter, and felt his lips tremble behind the muzzle Thor had placed on him after he had openly mocked the Star-Spangled Captain. After everything he had been through, all he wanted to do was run home to Frigga and cry in her skirts as he had once done as a child, to feel her arms around him again and the love she always shown him. His chest tightened as it struck him, that after all he had done, whether or not of his own volition, he couldn’t go home. Not that it should have ever been his home.

He came from a race of monsters, and while trying to prove himself worthy of Asgard, worthy of Odin’s love, he had revealed that he himself was a monster. He wasn’t Frigga’s child, he wasn’t even a true Odinson. No, he was Loki Laufeyson and he had nowhere to go. He had no family; he had even killed his birth father. How could Frigga ever care for such a monster?

Then there was Thor.

His brother had used Gungnir to try to save him from falling the Bifrost and into the cosmos, not shove him off as his tormentor had twisted his memories to believe during his many torture sessions. Because of these twisted memories, when The Other had asked Loki where he would start his invasion, Loki had picked Midgard. He knew how weak their planet was from Thor’s time there; they would be easy to conquer, and it had the extra bonus of hurting the brother that couldn’t stand him.

It was during his fight with his brother on top of Stark Tower that his head had begun to clear, when Thor began to break through the mental cage Loki was subconsciously trying to break free of. But the spell was stronger, and his mental strength had not fully returned, so he was lost once more. It wasn’t until the large, green abomination had treated him the same way a child would treat a ragdoll, that he had been able to break free and gain control of his own kind again.

_What have I done?_

As everything that had led up to this moment fully sank in, Loki found that he suddenly wanted nothing more than to scream out his pain and anger. He hastily ducked his head and reached up behind it to undo the blasted muzzle only to find he couldn’t open it. It was locked. No matter how much he clawed and pulled on it, the thing would remain firmly fastened until someone with a key undid it. So he did what he could do. He screamed behind it, not caring that not all of his sound could escape. It was not the sound, but the action that he needed, so he continued to scream and sob as he drew his knees up to his chest and tangled his fingers through his sweat dampened, bloody hair.

His sobs echoed off the passage walls, destroying the silence he had coveted, but he didn’t care. He was in a predicament, seeing as the cube could only serve to heighten his power so much while he was shackled. That didn't matter though, because both the shackles and the muzzle were designed to be magic proof, only able to be unlocked by key. Of course all of the keys he needed were on Asgard, why wouldn’t they be? The one place he couldn’t go without being thrown in the dungeon for an undeterminable amount of time.

After a while, as his emotions slowly came back under his control, Loki’s sobs finally began to die down. He had to focus. He had to figure out what to do.

He rose to his feet and began to walk along the passage, knowing jt would be a while before he reached any destination, but needing the time to think. The clanking of the chains as he walked interrupted his precious silence, but he could think around it. He didn’t know how long he walked, trying to think of a way around going to Asgard to try and obtain keys to the muzzle and chains, but he sighed heavily in defeat as he came to only one conclusion.

There was no way around it, he had to go to Asgard.

But now the big question: How was he going to get the keys he needed, and make it out of Asgard without being detected by Odin’s all seeing eye?

In his secret passages he was hidden – even from Heimdall – but he couldn’t remain undetected on Asgard for very long, definitely not for as long as he might need to. If he could speak with Frigga, she would know what to do. If anyone could figure this out it would be her.

Loki stopped in his tracks and gave himself a well-deserved hard eye roll as he realized what a fool he was. Curled up in a dark tunnel, sobbing his eyes out like a whelp. He sneered at himself behind the muzzle at how pathetic he had been. He had survived nearly a year being tormented by Thanos' underlings and hadn’t shed a single tear, and now that nothing was happening, now he cries? No wonder he broke so easily when the scepter was used on him. Pathetic.

Tucking the Tesseract in the crook of his elbow, pressing it between his arm and his ribs to have constant contact while freeing his hands, Loki dipped into the pocket dimension that he used to store an assortment of items and withdrew a simple looking gold chain. To an outsider, the chain wouldn’t look like anything special, but as he removed the transformation spell he’d placed on it years ago, the chain returned to its original form, which was a long and thin, golden-brown braid.

The braid had been a gift from Frigga, given to Loki just before she left on a trip to Vanaheim and left her family behind for the first time in Loki’s life. Tensions had been high for a reason still unknown to him even to this day, so to ease the worry of her youngest, Frigga had given him a way to tether to her well being, and also be able to track her if need be. She had no idea then, how much help it would bring him now.

He lowered himself to the ground, coming to rest with his legs in his meditation position before he rest the cube in his lap to once again have contact with it. He drew from the cube as much as he dared and wove a tracking spell into a doppelganger spell, making sure to keep the double invisible at first in case she wasn’t alone, and closed his eyes as he used her hair as the tether for the spell.

When he opened his invisible doppelganger's eyes, he was standing in her tea room, watching her talk with her ladies-in-waiting. His chest tightened at the sight of her, and it was only for the sake of his mission that he managed to stay his ground. He couldn’t let himself be known yet. Plus, if anything were to touch his shade it would break the fragile spell. He frowned as he watched her speak in subdued tones to the other women, her usually strong voice sounding defeated as she exchanged words with her friends.

“My Queen, I’m sure the Prince will be found safe and sound.” One of her ladies, Paola, had tried to reassure Frigga and was met with a somber gaze from the Allmother. To her credit, Paola did try to manage a reassuring smile, but even from across the room Loki could see the doubt in her eyes.

Frigga gave her a weak, appreciative smile. “Thank you, dear Lady Paola, for your comforting words. I fear, however, for what may happen if he were found. Odin feels as if he’s been made a fool in the eyes of Asgard for not knowing his own son has been alive this whole time.” A deep frown marred her features as she lowered her gaze. “Not to mention the destruction he brought to Midgard, a realm under Odin and Thor's protection… My heart could not bare to see my son locked away, but I fear chains are all I see for my youngest.”

It was Ignatia that gasped softly from her spot closest to his mother. “You do not honestly think the Allfather would lock away his own child, do you?”

Frigga turned her saddened eyes on the girl, wishing Ignatia knew what she herself knew of Loki’s true heritage. “I can hope I am wrong, Lady Ignatia, but I do not dare underestimate my husband’s anger when he feels he has been embarrassed in front of his people.”

Just as Rayen opened her mouth to speak, the doors to the tea room burst open, startling all of Frigga’s ladies-in-waiting as Odin stormed in with two Einherjar behind him.

“Where is he?” Odin demanded, his voice booming in the otherwise quiet tea room. “Where is the Liar God?”

Of the women in the tea room, Frigga was the only one not startled. In fact, Loki could see the flex of her jaw muscle clenching as her eyes darkened with a stormy anger and she rose to her feet, to turn and level a hard stare at her husband while addressing her ladies who had moved behind their queen.

“Ladies, I am afraid our tea time is over. Please leave the room to my hus-”

“No!” Odin snapped before facing the armored guards. “Men, shut the doors and stand guard. No one leaves until I’m done.”

“And just what do you think you’ll be doing?” Frigga questioned, her voice cold but calm as her stormy eyes stared down her husband. Behind her, the Einherjar moved to shut and stand in front of the doors as their king had ordered. “Besides giving my ladies-in-waiting an unjustified fright?”

“Do you think me stupid, my Queen?” He asked harshly as his grip on Gungnir visibly tightened, drawing Loki’s attention to the movement. “I know your son is here.”

Before Odin could lift Gungnir and slam the base to the ground, Loki withdrew his shade and opened his eyes in the tunnel. His breath was already coming in slow, shallow inhales and exhales, having exerted himself to cast what magic he could. He hated to withdraw his shade so quickly – especially with how damn difficult it was to cast, even with the help of the Tesseract – but he knew from past experience Odin had been about to use the magic within Gungnir to shatter any illusions he had been casting, which would have resulted in the invisibility part of his spell being broken. His shade would have been exposed and that was something he couldn’t risk.

Normally he would have found himself thoroughly amused that Odin thought him stupid enough to hide as one of his moth… Frigga’s…ladies-in-waiting, but with his energy running low and his mind full of desperation, Loki was irritated by Odin’s assumption as it had interrupted what precious time and magical energy he had left. He waited a moment, gathering up his energy for one more spell, and cast the invisible shade once more to see Odin standing in front of Frigga, trying to appear as imposing as he could.

Much to Loki’s amusement, Frigga was obviously not intimidated by Odin’s authoritative stance, and no longer bothered to conceal the rage warring in her eyes as she stared her husband down.

“You listen to me, Odin Borson,” Frigga spoke calmly, her voice firm and unyielding, “Now that you have seen my ladies are not _our_ son in disguise, I would advise you allow them to leave. Lest you would rather prefer them hear just how all of this is your fault?” She raised a challenging brow to match the challenge in her voice, unaware of how proud of her Loki was in that moment.

Odin and Frigga stared at each other in heavy silence, neither spouse blinking as each waited for the other to cave. It didn’t take long though, before Odin spared a glance to the ladies over his wife’s shoulder and uttered a single word command.

“Leave.”

Neither Frigga nor Odin moved or broke eye contact as the ladies hurriedly left the room without glancing back, hurrying out the doors the Einherjar had opened for them. The tension in the room was heavy, Loki could nearly feel it through his shade, as even the guards followed with a dismissive wave from their king; the click of the door closing in place echoed in the quiet room.

“Now, tell me Frigga, just how exactly is the fool’s behavior _my_ fault?”

“Because, I warned you that no good would come of hiding Loki's true heritage from him. I have the gift of foresight and yet you chose not to heed my warning.”

“If he had known the truth of his origins sooner, he would have tried to conquer Asgard sooner than he did!”

“Odin Borson you will not raise your voice at me.” Frigga’s tone was a warning one as she drew herself up and stared into his eye. “You are the reason my son is missing, you old fool, and Loki did not try to take over Asgard at Thor’s coronation. If that is what you took from his actions then you are a bigger fool than I realized.”

“And what did my queen take away from his actions then?” He challenged, his one good eye glaring at her.

“Well for starters he was showing you the very same thing I had said to you numerous times, that Thor was not yet ready to lead as you assumed he was. He may have been your first son, Odin, and Loki may have reminded you of Hela, but neither of our children are like your first born. Neither of them are as blood thirsty as you once were.” Frigga’s featured were marred by an uncharacteristic frown as she looked her husband over. “Though I must wonder if that side of you truly has been forgotten over the years.”

“I brought you your brat whelp, saved him from death-”

“And then fed him years of lies.” Frigga snapped, not caring that she cut her husband off. “When he was a child I could see keeping the truth from him, but when he was old enough to attend the universities on Vanaheim and Alfheim you should have let me tell him. Instead you continued to put him and Thor against one another to see who would rule a throne you knew only one could ever sit on.

“That leads me to the other part of how all of this is your fault. You pit them against each other to the point that Loki had to show you that he had what it takes to be a king. Never doubt my love for Thor, but he is _still_ not ready to be a ruler. If you were going to raise Loki with lies about his birthright then you should’ve planned on giving him a fair chance to prove his ability to carry on as king one day.”

“You never believed I would let him rule.” Odin spat out as he leered at Frigga. “As if I would ever allow a child of Laufey to sit on the throne of Asgard. Laufey was right when he chose to expose the whelp to the elem-” Odin’s words were cut off by the same hard slap that turned his head to the side.

Loki’s blood rushed through his ears like a raging river, drowning out the clattering sound of Odin’s metal eye covering as it hit the floor, having been knocked out by the slap. Odin’s words had pierced Loki's heart, tightening his chest as ice water trickled down his spine. His own father – his birth father – had left him in the cold of Jotunheim to die alone…and Odin agreed with his decision. Loki had known Odin had never loved him as he had loved Thor, but he always assumed it was because Thor was Odin’s first born. It never even occurred to him that Odin’s hatred could run deep enough to wish him dead.

“You should be ashamed of yourself.” Frigga’s voice was as cold as the stare she was giving her husband. “Jotunn or not, Loki is my _son_ , and you-”

“I,” Odin’s angered voice cut through his wife’s as he glared at her with his one eye, the now uncovered empty socket glaring at her as well, “only brought you the brat to help you heal from the loss of our heir. Had I known then the trouble he was going to cause, I would have left him there to die like he was supposed to and just made due with not having an heir from our union.”

Frigga’s eyes took on a look Loki had never seen before, but with him still processing everything he was hearing as more questions filled his mind, he couldn’t make out what the look was.

Who was Hela? Why did Odin fear either him or Thor turning out like her?

What did Odin mean she hadn’t given him an heir? They had Thor.

Odin had once been blood thirsty? Sure, he had known Odin could be fierce and unyielding in a battle, but had he once been as monstrous as the very monsters he hated?

Frigga had lost a child?

Did Thor know any of this?

What would have happened to him if Frigga hadn’t lost a babe prior to him being found? Would Odin truly have left a defenseless child to die?

Loki was so caught up in his thoughts that he missed the last bit of the conversation exchange between Frigga and Odin, and only became aware of what was going on in the room when Odin demanded to know where his wife was going. Loki watched as his mother, who had begun to walk to the door, stopped and looked at Odin with a look colder than any Loki had ever seen her give her king.

“I am going to see my Aunts on Vanaheim,” she answered with a tone as cold as her stare, “and I will come home when either my son is home or I have forgiven you, whichever should come first. Since I don’t trust you to tell me of his return, I’ll leave word with Heimdall to send for me.”

And with those parting words his mother turned her back on the Allfather and glided out of the tea room, presumably to her bed chambers to pack for her trip.

Taking a note from Frigga, Loki withdrew his shade and opened his eyes in the dark tunnel. He breathed slow but heavy as he took note of how such prolonged use of his magic had worn him down thanks to the blasted chains and manacles still on him. He rose to his feet and leaned heavily on the wall as he began moving along the corridor, and when the path split he took the corridor that would exit out to one of the forests of Vanaheim. If he could get to Vanaheim he could teleport to the home of his Great Aunts.

Though the old crones loved Thor dearly, it was Loki they took to, sharing with him some of the magic they had shared with Frigga during her time under their care. Loki knew that he would be safe with them; they would happily do anything they could do to piss off Odin. His vision had began to swim by the time he finally neared the end of the passage, making him wonder briefly if he would pass out before he made it.

Just as he was sure he would pass out in the tunnels, Loki emerged into the forests, looking to have come out of a cave should anyone be around to witness him emerging. The exhausted prince was so determined to try and make it to his Great Aunts’ abode that he didn’t notice the figure leaning against a tree nearby, watching him with eyes that were growing watery despite the desperation of their owner to not cry.

“What a mess you’ve gotten yourself into, my little mischief maker.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so excited to finally get around to a Loki chapter, you have no idea 😂 I'm just relieved to be at this part of the story. Hopefully the next part won't take too long, even though I've had a lot of fun doing research for this upcoming bit. As always, comments are appreciated 😊

**Author's Note:**

> Because this is a work in progress I'm open to ideas and suggestions, _maybe_ even requests (depending on the request). But as always, comments/feedback are loved and appreciated!
> 
> If you have any ideas/requests/want to chat, shoot me a message at sibunanubis@outlook.com !


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